AMERICAN ORATORY 
OF TO-DAY 



EDITED BY 

EDWIN Dubois shurter 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 



SOUTH-WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY 
Austin, Texas San Francisco, California 



6r 



Copyright, igio, by 
Edwin DuBois Shurter 



The Plimpton Press Noncood Mass. U.S.A. 



O ni A y 7 f; « Q « 



PREFACE 

This work differs from most collations of oratorical 
selections in two particulars: first, it is truly American, 
— representative of all parts of the country; secondly, 
the addresses are by present-day speakers, on live sub- 
jects. Hence, there will be found herein many names 
not heretofore included in books of this nature, and the 
speeches furnish an instructive and suggestive exposition 
of contemporary thought on various subjects. 

The book is intended for the citizen who is interested 
in the public discussion of questions of the day, and 
for teachers and students in our schools and colleges 
who are looking for new, up-to-date declamations. 

A fuller representation of American public speakers 
will be given in subsequent volumes; and to this end, 
the editor would be glad to receive suggestions as to 
speakers not included in the present volume. 

E. D. S. 

The University of Texas, 
September, igio. 



CONTENTS 

(For an Index of Speakers see page ii) 

PAGE 

Hugo Grotius and International Peace . Andrew D. White 15 

A Pan-American Policy Elihu Root 18 

Insurgent Republicanism .... Albert J. Beveridge 20 

-^ The Law's Delays William H. Taft 2$ 

The Elements of Good Citizenship . Theodore Roosevelt 27 

The Duty of Enthusiasm . . . . M. Woolsey Stryker 29 

The Apostle of a New Idea . . . Herbert S. Bigelow 32 
On the Murder of American Citizens 

IN Nicaragua Isador Rayner 34 

What Is a Good Man? Edward A. Ross 37 

The Leadership of Educated Men . . Stephen S. Wise 40 

The Atlantic Fleet in the Pacific . . James N. Gillett 42 

The American Navy Victor H. Metcalf 44 

The Initiative of the President .... Emory Speer 46 

California and William H. Taft . . George A. Knight 49 

William H. Taft for President . . Theodore E. Burton 52 

William J. Bryan for President . . . Ollie M. James 54 
The Republican and the Democratic 

Parties Henry Cabot Lodge 57 

" Stand Pat," Socialism, AisTD Democracy . Morris S hep pard 60 

Populism Thomas E. Watson 63 

Socialism Eugene V. Debs 66 

Americanism Guy Carleton Lee 68 

Social Idealism Shailer Mathews 70 

The New Patriotism Ray Stannard Baker 71 

From the Top of the Washington 

Monument Henry B.F. MacFarland 74 < 

The Confederate Soldier . . . John Sharp Williams tj 

The Union Soldier John M. Thurston 80 

The Boy and the Juvenile Court . . Ben B. Lindsey 83 

Neighbors Needed Jacob Riis 86 

America's Future Rulers .... Russell H. Conwell 88 

S 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Progressive America Andrew S. Draper gi 

The Torch of Civilization . . . Thomas Nelson Page 92 

Faith in Mankind Arthur T. Hadley 94 

Our Duty to the English Tongue . . John H. Finley 96 

The Protection of American Citizens William P. Frye 98 

Freemasonry George W. Atkinson loi 

Industrial Freedom ..... Robert M. La Follette 103 

Elements of Success in Business . . Andrew Carnegie 105 
The Minuteman of the American 

Revolution Charles J . Bonaparte 107 

King's Mountain — Its Meaning 

AND Message Henry N. Snyder 109 

A Plea for American Drama .... Percy MacKaye 112 

The Louisiana Purchase . . . Newton C. Blanchard 114 

The Challenge of the Sky-Line . . . Walter Williams 116 

Moral Vision John A. Rice 117 

The Star-Spangled Banner Henry Watterson 120 

The Flag of the Union .... William H. Fleming 123 

The Coherent Life Bliss Perry 126 

Commercialism and Idealism . . . Francis G. Peabody 129 

Lake Champlain in Retrospect Wendell Phillips Staford 131 

Our Duty to Posterity William M. Sloane 134 

The Conservation of the States . . Edward T. Taylor 136 
Natural Resources and Special 

Interests Gifford Pinchot 139 

Water-Power and the "Interests" . James R. Garfield 141 

In West Virginia Ira E. Robinson 143 

Virginia Clifton W. Brans ford 145 

Utah William Spry 146 

" Old Kentucky Home " William O. Bradley 149 

Washington and Lincoln .... Martin W. Littleton 150 

The Personality of Lincoln . . Richard Watson Gilder 153 

Reminiscences of Lincoln .... Joseph G. Cannon 155 

Abraham Lincoln Frank W. Benson 158 

Tribute to McKinley Hoke Smith 161 

Eulogy of Robert E. Lee .... Charles E. Fenner 162 
Robert E. Lee and Washington 

College Thomas J. Kernan 165 



CONTENTS 7 



PAGE 



Tribute to Jefferson Davis .... Dunbar Rowland 167 

Jefferson Davis and Mississippi . . . Thomas Spight 170 
The Haywood Trial: Plea for 

THE Defense Clarence S. Darrow 173 

The Haywood Trial: Plea for 

THE Prosecution William E. Borah 177 

Damage Suits and the Law . . . William S. Cowherd 180 

The Lawyer in American History . Frederick W. Lehmann 182 

Unanimity in Verdicts of Juries . . Hiram M. Garwood 185 

y^ Trial by Jury Delphin M. Delmas 187 

\/The Profession of the Law . , . Presley K. Ewing 189 

»/^The Equipment of the Lawyer . . George W. Kirchwey 191 

^Attorney and Client . . . . F. Charles Hume, Jr. 194 

The "GrvEN-Up" Man .... Maud Ballington Booth 196 

The Brotherhood and Home Missions . William Rader 198 

"In God We Trust" Washington Gardner 201 

Victories of Christianity . . ' . . Newell Dwight Hillis 203 

Sanitation and Religion . . . Joseph A. McCullough 205 

The Catholic Church James Gibbons 207 

The New Religion Charles W. Eliot 210 

"The New Religion": A Criticism Charles H. Parkhurst 213 
The Practise of Immortality . . . Washington Gladden 216 
The Bible and the Twentieth- 
Century Man Frank W. Gunsaulus 218 

Christianity is Real William H. P. Faunce 220 

Without God is Nothing Ballington Booth 223 

Our Country and the World .... Josiah Strong 226 

International Arbitration and Peace Richard Bartholdt 228 

World Peace Seth Low 231 

The National Defense .... Richmond P. Hobson 232 

On Raising the Battle-Ship "Maine" . Frank M. Nye 235 

A Free Press and Free Paper. . . . Thomas P. Gore 236 

American Citizenship John D. Long 239 

Swollen Fortunes and the Taxation 

OF Inheritances Joseph M. Dixon 241 

The Legislator and the Popular Will . Frank S. Black 244 

Overcome Evil with Good Henry Van Dyke 246 

The Trust and the Consumer .... Robert L. Henry 249 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Christian Use of Wealth . William De Witt Hyde 251 

Leadership in a Democracy . . . Harry Pratt Judson 253 

Good Citizenship St. Clair McKelway 256 

The New Politics Jacob Gould Schurman 258 

Democracy Nicholas Murray Butler 261 

Our Constitutional System . William Bourke Cockran 264 

Irish Ineluence in America . . . Wallace McCamant 266 

A Message from Ireland .... Frank J. Sullivan 269 

Suffrage for Women Anna H. Shaw 270 

Woman and the Suffrage . . . . . Lyman Abbott 272 

The Girl in the Kitchen John H. Vincent 275 

Aaierica's Uncrowned Queen . . . Homer T. Wilson 277 

Earnestness and Thoroughness . . . Leon Harrison 278 
The * ' Insurgent ' ' Republicans : 

A Reply to Speaker Cannon . . Albert B. Cummins 281 
Against the Payne-Aldrich Tariff 

Bill Jonathan P. Dolliver 283 

Tribute to Governor John A. 

Johnson Charles Evans Hughes 286 

William of Orange-Nassau: The Great 

Moderate Man in History . William Elliot Griffis 290 

England's "Grand Old Man" . . Samuel Parkes C adman 293 

Shakespeare the Unapproachable Edward H. Randolph 296 

Tribute to John B. Allen Thomas Burke 299 

Edgar Allan Poe Whitelaw Reid 301 

Julius C^sar and John Calvin , Henry M. MacCracken 303 

The Greatness of John Marshall . . Richard Olney 306 

Eulogy of William B. Allison . . . John W. Daniel 308 

Alexander Hamilton Joseph H. Choate 310 

"Lee's Old War Horse: Lieutenant- 

General James Longstreet . . Lucian Lamar Knight 313 

Eulogy of Davtd A. DeArmond . . William P. Borland 316 

Eulogy of Anselm J. McLaurin . . William A. Dickson 319 

The Pilgrim Faith Charles F. Aked 321 

The Permanence of Puritan 

Principles . . Stewart L. Woodford 324 

Puritan and Cavalier Dudley G. Woolen 326 

Puritan and Catholic . . . William Henry O'Connell 329 



CONTENTS 9 



PAGE 



North Dakota and Inland Waterways . . John Burke 331 

Peary and the Pole Simeon Ford 334 

The Assimilated Dutchman .... Horace Porter 335 

At Threescore and Ten Mark Twain 338 

Texas and her Founders Champ Clark 340 

The Battle-Ship Texas Charles A . Culberson 343 

Texas — Undivided and Indivisible . Joseph W. Bailey 345 

Patriotism and the South James B. Clark 347 

Tribute to James B. Clark . . George Pierce Garrison 349 

The University — A Sacred Trust Thomas Ulvan Taylor 352 

Invasion of the North by the South . Jacob M. Dickinson 354 

The "Solid South" Charles W . Dahney 358 

The Blue and the Gray Robert L. Taylor 360 

The Spirit of the South .... Edwin A. Alderman 362 

The Civil War — and After . . William Gordon McCabe 364 

The Civil War in Retrospect . Robert W. McLaughlin 367 

Appomattox and the Age .... Samuel C. Mitchell 369 

Old Ideals and the Old South . . Henry Louis Smith 371 

The Contact of Minds Woodrow Wilson 373 

The University and Petty Politics Benjamin Ide Wheeler 375 

Our Country's Need of Educated Men William F. Webster 377 

Three Tests of Education E. Erie Sparks 380 

Education and Ser\T[CE James H. Baker 382 

Education and Responsibility . . . Harry Noble Wilson 384 
American and Educational 

Expansion George Edwin MacLean 386 

The Muck-Raker Julius Kahn 389 

Progressive Republicanism .... Miles Poindexter 392 

American City Government .... Brand Whitlock 394 

Tribute to General Lew Wallace . Henry A . Barnhart 396 

John C. Calhoun Asbury F. Lever 399 

Scientific Farming Irving Bacheller 402 

The Battle for Righteousness . . Edgar Y. Mullins 403 

The Prince of Peace William J. Bryan 405 



INDEX OF SPEAKERS 





PAGE 


Abbott, Lyman 


272 


Aked, Charles F 


321 


Alderman, Edwin A 


362 


Atkinson, George W 


lOI 


Bailey, Joseph W 


345 


Baker, James H 


382 


Baker, Ray Stannard . . . . 


71 


Bamhart, Henry A 


396 


Bartholdt, Richard 


228 


Benson, Frank W 


158 


Beveridge, Albert J 


20 


Bigelow, Herbert S 


32 


Black, Frank S 


244 


Blanchard, Newton C. . . . 


114 


Bonaparte, Charles J 


107 


Booth, Ballington 


223 


Booth, Maud Ballington . . 


196 


Borah, Wilham E 


177 


Borland, WiUiam P 


316 


Bradley, WilHam 


149 


Bransford, Clifton W 


145 


Bryan, WilUam J 


• 405 


Burke, John 


331 


Burke, Thomas 


299 


Burton, Theodore E 


52 


Butler, Nicholas Murray . 


. 261 


Cadman, Samuel Parkes 


• 293 


Cannon, Joseph G 


• 155 


Carnegie, Andrew 


. los 



PAGE 

Choate, Joseph H 310 

Clark, Champ 340 

Clark, James B 347 

Cockran, WiUiam Eourke. . 264 

Conwell, Russell H 88 

Cowherd, WiUiam S 180 

Culberson, Charles A 343 

Cummins, Albert B 281 

Dabney, Charles W 358 

Daniel, John W 308 

Darrow, Clarence S 173 

Debs, Eugene V. 66 

Delmas, Delphin M 187 

Dickinson, Jacob M 354 

Dickson, WilUam A 319 

Dixon, Joseph M 241 

DoUiver, Jonathan P 283 

Draper, Andrew S 91 

EUot, Charles W 210 

Ewing, Presley K 189 

Faimce, William H. P. ... 220 

Fenner, Charles E 162 

Finley, John H 96 

Fleming, William H 123 

Ford, Simeon 334 

Frye, WUliam P 98 

Gardner, Washington .... 201 

Garfield, James R 141 



II 



12 



INDEX OF SPEAKERS 



PAGE 

Garrison, George Pierce. . 349 

Garwood, Hiram M 185 

Gibbons, James 207 

Gilder, Richard Watson . . 153 

Gillett, James N 42 

Gladden, Washington .... 216 

Gore, Thomas P 236 

Griffis, William Elliot 290 

Gimsaulus, Frank W 218 

Hadley, Arthur T 94 

Harrison, Leon 278 

Henry, Robert L 249 

Hillis, Newell Dwight 203 

Hobson, Richmond P. . . . 232 

Hughes, Charles Evans . . . 286 

Hume, F. Charles, Jr 194 

Hyde, William De Witt . . 251 

James, Ollie M 54 

Judson, Harry Pratt 253 

Kahn, Julius 389 

Keman, Thomas J 165 

Kirch wey, George W 191 

Knight, George A 49 

Knight, Lucian Lamar... 313 

La Follette, Robert M. . . 103 

Lee, Guy Carleton 68 

Lehmann, Frederick W. . . 182 

Lever, Asbiury F 399 

Lindsey, Ben B 83 

Littleton, Martin W 150 

Lodge, Henry Cabot 57 

Long, John D 239 

Low, Seth 231 



PAGE 

MacCracken, Henry M. . . 303 

MacFarland, Henry B. F. . 74 

MacKaye, Percy 112 

MacLean, George Edwin. 386 

Mathews, Shailer 70 

McCabe, William Gordon. 364 

McCamant, Wallace 266 

McCullough, Joseph A. . . 205 

McKelway, St. Clair 256 

McLaughlin, Robert W. . . 367 

Metcalf , Victor H 44 

Mitchell, Samuel C 369 

Mullins, Edgar Y 403 

Nye, Frank M 235 

O'Connell, William Henry 329 

Olney, Richard 306 

Page, Thomas Nelson 92 

Parkhurst, Charles H. ... 213 

Peabody, Francis W 129 

Perry, Bhss 126 

Pinchot, GifiEord 139 

Poindexter, Miles 392 

Porter, Horace 335 

Rader, WilUam 198 

Randolph, Edward H. . . . 296 

Ra3mor, Isador 34 

Reid, Whitelaw 301 

Rice, John A 117 

Riis, Jacob 86 

Robinson, Ira E 143 

Roosevelt, Theodore 27 

Root, Ehhu 18 



INDEX OF SPEAKERS 



13 



PAGE 

Ross, Edward A 37 

Rowland, Dunbar 167 

Schurman, Jacob Gould . . 258 

Shaw, Anna H 270 

Sheppard, Moms 60 

Sloane, William M 134 

Smith, Henry Louis 371 

Smith, Hoke 161 

Snyder, Henry N 109 

Sparks, E. Erie 380 

Speer, Emory 46 

Spight, Thomas 170 

Spry, WiUiam 146 

Stafford, Wendell Phillips 131 

Strong, Josiah 226 

Stryker, M. Woolsey 29 

Sullivan, Frank J 269 

Taft, William H 23 

Taylor, Edward T 136 

Taylor, Robert L 360 



PAGE 

Taylor, Thomas Ulvan ... 352 

Thurston, John M 80 

Twain, Mark 338 

Van Dyke, Henry 246 

Vincent, John H 275 

Watson, Thomas E 63 

Watterson, Henry 120 

Webster, William F 377 

White, Andrew D 15 

Whitlock, Brand 394 

Wheeler, Benjamin Ide . . 375 

Williams, John Sharp .... 77 

WiUiams, Walter 116 

Wilson, Harry Noble 384 

Wilson, Homer T 277 

Wilson, Woodrow 373 

Wise, Stephen S 40 

Woodford, Stewart L 324 

Wooten, Dudley G 326 



AMERICAN ORATORY 
OF TO-DAY 

HUGO GROTIUS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

ANDREW D. WHITE 

Ex-President of Cornell University, and former United States 
Minister to Russia and to Germany 

(Extract from an address delivered by Mr. White, as President of 
the American Delegation at The Hague Conference, on the occasion 
of the Grotius celebration at Delft, The Netherlands, July 4, 1899. 
The address was delivered in the cathedral of the city, in the imme- 
diate presence of the monuments of William of Orange and of Hugo 
Grotius. This address, and those by Senators Root and Beveridge 
which follow, may well be noted as epoch-making speeches.) 

This is the ancient and honored city of Delft. From 
its haven, not distant, sailed the Mayflower — bearing the 
Pilgrim Fathers who, in a time of obstinate and bitter 
persecution, brought to the American continent the germs 
of that toleration which had been especially developed 
among them during their stay in The Netherlands, and 
of which Hugo Grotius was an apostle. In this town 
Grotius was born; in this temple he worshiped; this 
pavement he trod when a child; often were these scenes 
revisited by him in his boyhood; at his death his mortal 
body was placed in this hallowed ground. Time and 
place, then, would both seem to make this tribute fitting. 

My honored colleagues and friends, more than once 

15 



i6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

I have come as a pilgrim to this sacred shrine. In my 
young manhood, more than thirty years ago, and at 
various times since, I have sat here and reflected upon 
what these mighty men, here entombed, have done for 
the world, and what, though dead, they yet speak to 
mankind. I seem to hear them still. 

From this tomb of William the Silent comes, in this 
hour, a voice bidding the Peace Conference be brave, and 
true, and trustful in that Power in the universe which 
works for righteousness. 

From this tomb of Grotius I seem to hear a voice which 
says to us as the delegates of the nations: "Go on with 
your mighty work; avoid, as you would avoid the germs 
of pestilence, those exhalations of international hatred 
which take shape in monstrous fallacies and morbid 
fictions regarding alleged antagonistic interests. Guard 
well the treasures of civiHzation with which each of you 
is entrusted; but bear in mind that you hold a mandate 
from humanity. Go on with your work. Pseudo-phi- 
losophers will prophesy mahgnantly against you; pessi- 
mists wiU laugh you to scorn; C3niics will sneer at you; 
zealots will abuse you for what you have not done; sub- 
Hmely unpractical thinkers will revile you for what you 
have done; ephemeral critics will ridicule you as dupes; 
enthusiasts, blind to the difficulties in your path and to 
everything outside their httle circumscribed fields, wtII 
denounce you as traitors to humanity. Heed them not; 
go on with your work. Heed not the clamor of zealots, 
or cynics, or pessimists, or pseudo-philosophers, or enthu- 
siasts, or fault-finders. Go on with the work of strength- 
ening peace and humanizing war; give greater scope and 
strength to provisions which will make war less cruel; 



ANDREW D. WHITE 17 

perfect those laws of war which diminish the unmerited 
sufferings of populations; and, above all, give to the 
worid at least a beginning of an effective, practicable 
scheme of arbitration." 

These are the words which an American seems to 
hear issuing from this shriae to-day; and I seem also 
to hear from it a prophecy. I seem to hear Grotius 
saying to us: "Fear neither opposition nor detraction. 
As my own book, which grew out of the horrors of the 
Wars of Seventy and the Thirty Years' War, contained 
the germ from which your great Conference has grown, 
so your work, which is demanded by a world bent almost 
to breaking under the weight of ever-iucreasing arma- 
ments, shall be a germ from which future Conferences 
shall evolve plans ever fuller, better, and nobler." And 
I also seem to hear a message from him to the jurists 
of the great universities who honor us with their pres- 
ence to-day, including especially that renowned Univer- 
sity of Ley den, which gave to Grotius his first knowledge 
of the law, and that eminent University of Konigsberg, 
which gave him his most pliilosophical disciple — to all of 
these I seem to hear him say, "Go on in your labor to 
search out the facts and to develop the principles which 
shall enable future Conferences to build more and more 
broadly, more and more loftily for peace." 



I8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



A PAN-AMERICAN POLICY 

ELIHTJ ROOT 

United States Senator from New York, former Secretary of Waff 
and Secretary of State 

(Extract from his address at the Pan-American Conference held 
at Rio Janeiro, South America, 1906.) 

No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to 
live. Each nation's growth is a part of the development 
of the race. There may be leaders and there may be 
laggards, but no nation can long continue very far in 
advance of the general progress of mankind, and no 
nation that is not doomed to extinction can remain very 
far behind. It is with nations as it is with individual 
men ; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by 
the influence of others' judgment, broadening of views 
by the experience and thought of equals, acceptance of 
the moral standards of a community the desire for whose 
good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right con- 
duct, — these are the conditions of growth in civiliza- 
tion. A people whose minds are not open to the lessons 
of the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by 
the aspirations and the achievements of humanity strug- 
gling the world over for liberty and justice, must be 
left behind by civilization, in its steady and beneficent 
advance. 

These beneficent results the Government and the 
people of the United States of America greatly desire. 
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no terri- 
tory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sov- 



ELIHU ROOT 19 

ereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and 
equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the 
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of 
the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that 
respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppres- 
sion of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any 
rights, or privileges, or powers that we do not freely con- 
cede to every American repubhc. We wish to increase 
our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, 
in wisdom, and in spirit, but our conception of the true 
way to accompHsh this is not to pull down others and 
profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common 
prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become 
greater and stronger together. 

Let us help each other to show that for all the races 
of men the Liberty for which we have fought and labored 
is the twin sister of Justice and Peace. Let us unite 
in creating and maintaining and making effective an all- 
American pubUc opinion, whose power shall influence 
international conduct and prevent international wrong, 
and narrow the causes of war, and forever preserve our 
free lands from the burden of such armaments as are 
massed behind the frontiers of Europe, and bring us 
ever nearer to the perfection of ordered Uberty. So 
shall come security and prosperity, production and trade, 
wealth, learning, the arts, and happiness for us all. 

Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can 
very much be done. You labor more for the future 
than for the present; but if the right impulse be given, 
if the right tendency be estabhshed, the work you do 
here will go on among all the millions of people in the 
American continents long after your final adjournment. 



20 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all 
our beloved countries, which may it please God to 
continue free and independent and happy for ages to 
come. 



INSURGENT REPUBLICANISM 

ALBERT J. BEVERroCE ; 

United States Senator from Indiana 

(The opening and closing parts of a speech delivered before the 
Republican State Convention, at Indianapolis, Indiana, April 5, 
1910. The Indianapolis Star, in its report of the occasion, said: 
"Overshadowing everything was the wonderful interest manifested 
in Senator Beveridge's speech. Perhaps it was realized by hun- 
dreds of party men that they were witnessing what might be termed 
the dawn of a political to-morrow.") 

The coming battle is not so much between poKtical 
parties as such as between the rights of the people and 
the powers of pillage. In this struggle the RepubHcans 
of Indiana stand for the people. Our appeal is not to 
partisans because of partisanship, but to citizens because 
of citizenship. 

It is another phase of the conflict as old as the republic. 
It was so when Washington fought to lift from the people's 
necks the yoke of British oppression, and the people 
who were patriots supported him and won. It was so 
when Jackson defied secession and broke the power of 
arrogant and unwise wealth, and while men of his own 
party left him, other men of all parties in overwhelming 
majorities held up Andrew Jackson's hands. It was so 
when Abraham Lincoln sought to save the nation and 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 21 

end slavery, and loyal men of all parties forgot ancient 
party lines and gladly marched to death for the republic 
and human rights. It was so in the last ten years, when 
another President attacked the country's organized greed 
which was fattening on the labor and lives of the 
masses, and again the masses forgot their partisan- 
ship and overpowering numbers rallied around Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. 

The people were for these men because these men were 
for the people. 

A political party is not a group of politicians, each 
with his following, combining to win the spoils of place 
and power. Such an organization is not a party — it is 
a band of brigands, and its appeals in the name of the 
party are mere attempts to beguile and defraud the 
voter for its selfish purposes. Such organizations and 
men are the tools and agents of lawless interests which 
know no party, attempt to use all parties, and practise 
only the policies of profit. 

We fight not only the battles of the people against the 
powers that prey upon them, but also we fight the battles 
of civilization against the powers that oppose it. With 
all my soul I believe in the powers of light against the 
powers of darkness. Sometimes those powers of darkness 
and of light are arrayed in a contest as broad as a state; 
sometimes they are arrayed in a conflict that embraces 
the nation. But in the end they include all nations and 
all humanity. Always, in one form or another, old privi- 
lege holds his sway; yet always the people advance upon 
him and his hosts, and in the end the people triumph. 

To me public life has but one meaning; to me this 
republic has but one meaning. It is this: here are mil- 



22 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

lions of human beings; not one of these millions asked to 
be born, yet born we were without our consent; not one 
of us asks to die, yet die we must without our consent. 
And in the brief space between birth and death all of 
us, except the favored few, have a hard enough time. 
What can be done to make the load of all these milHons 
lighter? That is what civilization means to me. What 
can be done to help the American people give an example 
to all the world of the progress of civiUzation and human 
contentment? That is all public Hfe means to me. 

The success of a party as such means nothing; but the 
success of a party as it is the agent of human welfare 
means everything. I want the RepubHcan party to be 
that instrument. It must be. It shall be. It will be. 

Away with suggestion of individual power, profit, or 
career! Away with arguments for party advantage! 
Up with the banner of justice! Up with the flag of 
himian rights! And let us carry it to the end of the 
conflict, knowing that the welfare of the people is the 
only thing worth working for, worth hving for, and, as 
our fathers have shown us, the only thing worth dying 
for. Up with the banner of justice and human rights, 
and forward to battle, never doubting our certain \dctory. 

For the blood that founded arid saved the repubUc 
still pulses through American veins. Americans still will 
be masters and not vassals. Americans still stand for 
the flag unsullied, laws unpolluted, and that righteous- 
ness which exalteth a nation. Americans still stand for 
justice and against privilege; for equal rights for aU and 
against special favors for the few. Americans still stand 
for those eternal truths which made up the "faith of 
our fathers, blessed faith." 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 23 

Would you know the spirit and duty of the hour? 
Listen! and you will hear the fife and drum of Bunker 
Hill and Yorktown shrilling and throbbing the spirit 
and duty of '76 — and that is the spirit and duty of 
to-day. Listen and you will hear the bugle of Vicksburg 
and Appomattox pealing the spirit and duty of the heroic 
sixties — and that is the spirit and duty of to-day. For 
in another and a bloodless way again we fight for justice 
and human rights as in those splendid days of righteous- 
ness and glory. 

And, as the conflict rages, be of stout heart, fearing 
neither foe in front nor enemy in rear; for over us will 
hover the spirits of America's mighty dead — of Washing- 
ton and Jackson and Lincoln and Sumner and Morton 
and Grant — inspiring our souls, pointing our way to 
the overwhelming rout of the allied foes of the people, 
and placing upon our standards, at the battle's end, the 
laurels of an historic victory. Up, then, with the holy 
flag of justice and human rights, for *4n this sign we 
conquer." 



THE LAW'S DELAYS 

WILLIAM H. TAFT 
(From a speech made at Chicago, September 16, 1909.) 

There is no subject upon which I feel so deeply as 
upon the necessity for reform in the administration of 
both civil and criminal law. To sum it all up in one 
phrase, the difficulty in both is undue delay. It is not 
too much to say that the administration of criminal law 



24 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

in this country is a disgrace to our civilization, and that 
the prevalence of crime and fraud, which here is greatly 
in excess of that in the European countries, is due largely 
to the failure of the law and its administrators to bring 
criminals to justice. 

In this country there seems to have been on the part 
of all state legislatures a fear of the judge and not of 
the jury, and the power which he exercises in an English 
court has by legislation been reduced from time to time 
until now — and this is especially true in western states — 
he has hardly more power than the moderator in a re- 
ligious assembly. The tendency of legislation is to throw 
the reins on the back of the jury and to let them follow 
their own sweet will, influenced by all the arts of counsel 
for the defendant in leading them away from the real 
points at issue and in awakening their emotions of pity 
for the defendant in forgetfulness of the wrongs of the 
prosecuting witness, or it may be of the deceased, and of 
the rights of society to be protected against crime; and 
all these defects are emphasized in the delays which 
occur in the trials — delays made necessary because the 
trials take so great a time. 

A murder case in England will be disposed of in a day 
or two days that here will take three weeks or a month, 
and no one can say, after an examination of the records 
in England, that the rights of the defendant have not 
been preserved and that justice has not been done. It is 
true that in England they have enlarged the procedure 
to the point of allowing an appeal from a judgment in a 
criminal case to a court of appeals, but this appeal is 
usually taken and allowed only on a few questions easily 
considered by the court above and promptly decided. 



WILLIAM H. TAFT 25 

Counsel are not permitted to mouse through the record 
to find errors that in the trial seemed of little account, 
but that are developed into great injustices in the court 
of appeal. This is another defect of our procedure. 
No criminal is content with a judgment of the court 
below, and well may he not be, because the record of 
reversals is so great as to encourage it in every case and 
to hang important judgments in appellate proceedings 
sometimes for years. I don't know when the reforms are 
to be brought about in this country. Until our people 
shall become fully awake and in some concrete way be 
made to su5er from the escape of criminals from just 
judgment, this system may continue. 

One of the methods by which it could be remedied in 
some degree is to give judges more power in the trial of 
criminal cases, and enable them to aid the jury in its 
consideration of facts, and to exercise more control over 
the argmnents that counsel see fit to advance. Judges, 
and especially judges who are elected, ought not to be 
mistrusted by the people. A judgeship is a great office, 
and the man who holds it should exercise great power, 
and he ought to be allowed to exercise that in a trial by 
jury. Then it is undoubtedly true that in England 
lawyers, in the conduct of their cases, feel much more 
and respect much more their obhgation to assist the 
court in administering justice, and restrain themselves 
from adopting the desperate and extreme methods which 
American lawyers are even applauded for. 

The trial here is a game in which the advantage is 
with the criminal, and, if he wins, he seems to have the 
sympathy of a sporting public. Trial by jury, as it has 
come to us through the Constitution, is the trial by jury 



26 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

under the English law, and under that law the vagaries, 
the weaknesses, the timidities, and the ignorance of juries 
were to be neutraUzed by the presence in court of a 
judge to whom they should look for instruction upon the 
law and sound advice in respect to the facts, although, 
of course, with regard to the facts their ultimate con- 
clusion must be their own and they were fully at Uberty 
to disregard the judicial suggestion. 

But the reform in our criminal procedure is not the 
only reform that we ought to have in our courts. On 
the civil side of the courts there is undue delay, and this 
always works for the benefit of the man with the longest 
purse. The employment of lawyers and the payment 
of costs all become more expensive as the Htigation is 
extended. It used to be thought that a system by which 
cases involving small amounts could be carried to the 
supreme court, through two or three courts of interme- 
diate appeal, was a perfect system because it gave the poor 
man the same right to go to the supreme courts as a rich 
man. Nothing is further from the truth. What the poor 
man needs is a prompt decision of his case, and by Umiting 
the appeals in cases involving small amounts of money so 
that there shall be a final decision in the lower court, an 
opportunity is given to the poor litigant to secure a judg- 
ment in time to enjoy it and not after he has exhausted 
all his resources in litigating to the supreme court. 

I am a lawyer and admire my profession, but I must 
admit that we have had too many lawyers in legislating 
on legal procedure, and they have been prone to think 
that htigants were made for the purpose of furnishing 
business to courts and lawyers, and not courts and law- 
yers for the benefit of the people and litigants. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 27 

THE ELEMENTS OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

(Condensed from an address delivered at the University of Chi- 
cago, April 3, 1903.) 

It was one of our American humorists who, like all 
true humorists, was also a sage, who said that it was 
easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. Now, 
the aim in production of citizenship must not be merely 
the production of harmless citizenship. Of course, it is 
essential that you should not harm your fellows, but if, 
after you are through with life, all that can be truthfully 
said of you is that you did not do any harm, it must also 
truthfully be added that you did no particular good. 

Remember that the commandment had the two sides 
— to be harmless as doves and wise as serpents; to be 
moral in the highest and best sense of the word; to have 
the morality that abstains and endures, and also the 
morality that does and fears, the morality that can suffer 
and the morality that can achieve results — to have 
that and, coupled with it, to have the energy, the power 
to accomplish things, which every good citizen must have 
if his citizenship is to be of real value to the community. 

Mr. Judson said in his address to-day that the things 
we need are elemental. We need to produce not genius, 
not brilliancy, but the homely, conunonplace, elemental 
virtues. The reason we won in 1776, the reason that in 
the great trial from 1861 to 1865 this nation rang true 
metal, was because the average citizen had in him the 
stuff out of which good citizenship has been made from 



28 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

time immemorial, because he had in him honesty, courage, 
common sense. 

BrilHancy and genius? Yes, if we can have them in 
addition to the other virtues. If not, if brilHant genius 
comes without the accompaniment of the substantial 
quahties of character and soul, then it is a menace to 
the nation. If it comes in addition to those quahties, 
then, of course, we get the great general leader, we get 
the Lincoln, we get the man who can do more than 
any common man can do. But without it much can be 
done. 

And no one quahty is enough. First of all is honesty 
— remember that I am using the word in its broadest 
signification — honesty, decency, clean li\ing at home, 
clean living abroad, fair dealing in one's own family, 
fair dealing by the pubhc. 

And honesty is not enough. If a man is never so 
honest, but is timid, there is nothing to be done with 
him. In the Civil War you needed patriotism in the 
soldier, but if the soldier had the patriotism, and yet 
felt compelled to run away when that was needed, he 
was not of much use. Together with honesty you must 
have the second of the virile virtues, courage; courage 
to dare, courage to withstand the wrong and to fight 
aggressively and vigorously for the right. 

And if you have only honesty and courage, you may 
yet be an entirely worthless citizen. An honest and 
vaHant fool has but a small place of usefulness in the 
body poHtic. With honesty, with courage, must go com- 
mon sense, ability to work with your fellows, abihty 
when you go out of the academic halls to work with the 
men of this nation, the millions of men who have not an 



M. WOOLSEY STRYKER 29 

academic training, who will accept your leadership on 
just one consideration, and that is that you show yourself 
in the rough work of actual Hfe fit and able to lead. 



THE DUTY OF ENTHUSIASM 

M. WOOLSEY STRYKER 
President of Hamilton College 

(Extract from an address delivered at the celebration of Inde- 
pendence Day, at Woodstock, Connecticut, July 4, 1894.) 

True enthusiasm means daring and uncompromising 
devotion. It is not a sentiment and an intoxicant, but 
an ardent and quenchless hope that what should be shall 
be! This is dedication — the subhme surrender of the 
whole being to the guidance of the ever-on-going God. 

A wise Frenchman wrote a book under the proposition 
that "Eloquence is a Virtue." It is a faithful saying. 
When the real man arrives he speaks with tones that 
smite his time of stupidity as the thunders break the 
oppression of the heavy summer day. John the Baptist, 
Martin Luther, Cromwell, Mirabeau, Sam Adams, O'Con- 
nell, John Bright, Garrison, Phillips, Lincoln — these are 
the men whose enthusiasm interrupts and crushes the 
stolidity of custom and the irresolution of poHcy. Such 
men God sends as the couriers of repentance, and they 
are the herald-angels of the Evangel. They disdain the 
paltry evasions and subterfuges of expediency, and trem- 
bUng themselves in the reaHty of that kindling ideal 
which both consumes and compels them — taking fire 



30 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

like meteors by the rapidity and friction of their passage 
— they are the avatars of the message they announce! 

It is the conquest of the soul by great and profound 
ideas that makes great. This is the stuff whereof pioneers 
and prophets are made. The three great elements of 
power are these — judgment, imagination, hope. He 
who has these is complete and furnished to every good 
work. One may have either without the others — then 
he is gibbous instead of spherical. The true leader and 
the true follower — each is one who will take great risks 
for great reasons. 

"He either fears his fate too much, 
Or his deserts are small, 
Who mU not put it to the touch, 
And win or lose it all." 

Back in 1871, when men in Chicago were hanging 
themselves to lamp-posts and drowning themselves in the 
lake, a man put an advertisement in one of the papers, 
reading: "Men of Chicago, take hope. Our fathers 
raised her from the bog, and we can raise her from the 
ashes!" It is that spirit that raised that Phoenix City 
by the shore of Lake Michigan. It is in that Chicago 
spirit, translated and transfigured by the gospel of 
Christ, that we need to-day, every one of us, to put 
whole souls into all affairs. God will give us light if we 
ask him for it. Hope is creative, doubt is abortive. Let 
us hope, then act. The men who are willing to deny 
themselves any possible gain, who forget that a vote is 
a vow, who forget that a candidate is a man clad in 
white, who forget the patriotism of pa)dng taxes, who 
forget that law is like a bicycle and that the way to keep 
it standing is to keep it going, whose very bones are 



M. WOOLSEY STRYKER 31 

flabby \\ith civil neglect, whose minds are mere kennels 
for vagrant theories, and who recant the old-fashioned 
law of duty — these moral spendthrifts and soul paupers, 
these are the incubi of the times! Such a man is not a 
man, but a manikin. But upon the souls who are full 
of the enthusiasm of duty rests the unconquerable state. 
To these " the Christ that is to be " flings wide His efi'ectual 
doors. Ruled by such a ken, life can never seem shabby 
nor hope irrational. To him who truly hves and does, 
the veil of the \'isible becomes more and more diaphanous. 
There are such men. We do not always hsten to hear 
the deep breathing of the people ready to respond to 
the prophet of conscience. We bite into one blasted 
ear, and forget the green sabers of the corn that array 
a thousand prairies. We find one brackish pool, and 
forget the trickling of a myriad translucent springs. We 
see one whirling, copper cloud, and doubt the sun. But 
God reigns ! God reigns ! On some level shores the tides 
rise, invisibly percolating all the sands. One instant it 
is shore, and the next up comes the ocean and it is sea. 
The ebb is on no more, the flood- tide is on. Such is the 
spontaneity and instantaneousness of many a great and 
invisibly gradual movement \mder the Sovereign Spirit. 



32 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE APOSTLE OF A NEW IDEA 

HERBERT S. BIGELOW 
Minister of the People's Church, Cincinnati, Ohio 

(Extract from an address on " Calf Paths," being one of numerous 
addresses published by the People's Church and Town Meeting 
Society.) 

At Ephesus, a certain man, named Demetrius, a silver- 
smith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no 
little business unto the craftsmen; whom he gathered 
together, with the workingmen of like occupation, and 
said: "Sirs, ye know that by this business we have our 
wealth. And ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, 
but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded 
and turned away much people, saying that they are no 
gods that are made with hands; and not only is there 
danger that this our trade come into disrepute, but also 
that the temple of the great goddess Diana be made 
of no account, and that she should even be deposed 
from her magnificence, whom all Asia and the world 
worshipeth." 

And when they heard this they were filled with wrath 
and cried out, saying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" 
And they rushed with one accord into the theater; and 
some cried one thing and some another; for the assem- 
bly was in confusion; and the greater part knew not 
wherefore they were come together. 

The history of the world can be boiled down to this 
story of Paul and Demetrius and the silversmiths and 
mob at Ephesus. We have always the same contending 



HERBERT S. BIGELOW 33 

forces — Paul, the apostle of a new idea; Demetrius and 
the silversmiths, whose business is threatened by that 
idea; and the mob that joins in the hue and cry against 
the apostle without knowing why. Progress is the result- 
ant of these three forces — special interest and ignorance 
on the one side, and, on the other, the power of truth. 
This is the necessary formula for the right understanding 
of our own or any other age. 

It is a present-day custom for the members of the 
English Parliament to bow three times before taking 
their seats. An American, mystified by this strange cus- 
tom, inquired the reason for it. He was astonished to 
find the EngHshmen could not tell him. No one seemed 
to know, not even the men who did the bowing. But 
after much research the mystery was cleared away. The 
buildings of Parhament had once burned, and the mem- 
bers were quartered for a period in St. Stephen's Chapel. 
Having the altar of the church before them, they made 
the customary bow to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
When they moved in their present abode they did not 
take the altar with them, but they kept on bowing never- 
theless. 

Institutions survive the reasons for their existence. 
Mental habits yield reluctantly to changed conditions. 
The chasm widens between old custom and present need, 
and every age requires its moral engineers to bridge the 
chasm and rationalize the ways of life. 

The first message sent over the telegraph wire was 
dictated by an army officer. It was this: "Attention: 
The Universe. By kingdoms: Right Wheel." This is 
the order that every new idea brings. 

Men tell us of our natural resources and the need of 



34 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

their conservation, of the power that is wasted every 
day, of the wealth that is lost in fire and flood, in raging 
rivers and plunging falls and arid plains. But greater 
than all these resources combined is the untapped reser- 
voir of truth, the infinite possibility, the incomprehen- 
sible power that is yet to spring from the unfettered 
brain of man. They who loosen the grip of the past, 
they who wear away the obstructions of custom and 
tradition, they who inspire man with faith in himself, 
teach him the courage to think and to do, they who 
help to break the chains of prejudice and superstition, 
of fear and unbeHef , — they are the greatest conservators 
of all, and the wealth of mind which they open up is the 
inexhaustible resource of man. 



ON THE MURDER OF AMERICAN CITIZENS 
IN NICARAGUA 

ISADOR RAYNER 

United States Senator from Maryland 

(Adapted from a speech delivered in the Senate of the United 
States, December 13, 1909.) 

On the morning of November" 16, 1909, two American 
citizens, named Cannon and Groce, who had served as 
soldiers in the revolutionary army of General Estrada, in 
Nicaragua, and had been captured as prisoners of war, 
were marched out and shot to death by order of Zelaya, 
the lately deposed president of the republic of Nicaragua, 
and in spite of the protests of his oflScers. 



ISADOR RAYNER 35 

Mr. President, I have watched for years the revolu- 
tionary history of Central America, and am familiar with 
the career of a great many of the impostors and usurpers 
and the grotesque and motley leaders that have sprung 
from their chaotic institutions, but Zelaya is probably 
the most despicable figure that has ever arisen in their 
midst. If he were simply a highwayman, we might 
identify him; if he were simply a tyrant, who oppressed 
the people for the purpose of robbing them, we might 
particularize him; if he were a usurper who was only 
holding on to power so long as there was any money in 
the treasury to steal, or any further territory that he 
could sack for private plunder, we could assign him a 
proper place in the ranks of some of his predecessors; 
and if he were purely an assassin who regarded murder 
as a legitimate profession through which he could despoil 
his victims of their possessions until the time came for 
him to flee from the hands of retributive justice, it would 
be an easy task also for anyone acquainted with the 
poUtical history of Nicaragua to classify him. 

He is, however, all of these things combined. In the 
school of corruption, dishonor, perfidy, and crime he 
stands without a peer, and exhibits in one glow of asso- 
ciated harmony "the pride of every model and the per- 
fection of every master." I have been informed upon 
the most reliable authority that the vices of his private 
Hfe are more infamous in their indescribable details than 
the iniquities of his pubHc career. Such a creature as 
this deserves the execration of mankind. 

Now, as the culminating infamy of his administration, 
trampling upon every instinct of humanity, in violation 
of imiversal law, in defiance of those precepts of the 



36 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

international code that have been recognized ever since 
the night of barbarism receded before the rays of civiliza- 
tion, he has put to torture and then to death two American 
citizens who were not guilty of treason, who were not 
spies, but whom he had captured as prisoners of war in 
the army of the revolutionists. 

This act was not only the act of a fiend, but was an 
insult to the honor of this republic, and cannot remain 
unavenged. This Government is a cowardly Government 
if it does not make an example of Zelaya before the eyes 
of the civilized world. This case will not admit of any 
trifling or concessions. If two American citizens — I 
care not who they were or what they were, citizens in 
high standing, as they have been reputed to be, or soldiers 
of fortune — have been murdered by Zelaya, then he 
must be made to pay the penalty of his crime. No other 
punishment will meet with the favor or the temper of 
the American people. It is absolutely preposterous for 
us to talk about indemnity. Indemnity is no recom- 
pense for murder. No such recreant move as this will 
satisfy the demands of justice. If Zelaya had the right 
to sentence these men to death and execute them in 
cold blood, then we must acknowledge that right and 
recognize it before the nations of the world. If he did 
not have that right, no matter how petty and insignificant 
he may be in the eyes of diplomacy or upon the sphere 
of the world's action, no matter how trivial and unim- 
portant a station his Government may occupy, this 
Government is his accuser, and if he is guilty he must 
be awarded the doom and fate that he deserves, so that 
every tyrant on this earth, in every nationahty under 
the sun, and in every government, large or small, shall 



EDWARD A. ROSS 37 

be told once and forever that our flag follows our citizens 
wherever they go, and that when an assassination like 
this occurs the malefactor must take his place, like any 
other culprit, at the bar of criminal justice, and must 
answer for the deed with his Uberty or his Hfe. 



WHAT IS A GOOD MAN? 

EDWARD A. ROSS 
Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago 

(Condensed from a lecture delivered on various occasions.) 

One is not "good" because he is strict and punctual 
in devout observances. When prompted by a canny con- 
cern for one's salvation, church-going. Sabbath-keeping, 
and fasting are no more goodness than is careful atten- 
tion to one's fire insurance policies. 

Nor do correct habits constitute goodness. Absti- 
nence from Hquor or tobacco may be no more meritorious 
than abstinence from Welsh rarebit. Nevertheless, self- 
control is a requisite and no one enslaved by his appetites 
is in the way of virtue. 

Senseless self-denial is not goodness. The rigorist who 
eschews whist, dancing, and theater may be as futile 
an egoist as St. Simon StyHtes on his pillar. 

In a time as congenial to the family virtues as ours, 
one deserves no wreath for being "a faithful husband 
and a loving father." In the eleventh century a man 
who can read and write is "learned," and a man who 
keeps his marriage vows is "good"; but not to-day. 



38 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Rich gifts prove nothing till we know how the donor 
got the money and how much he has. The only gift is 
a portion of one's self; and the giving of superfluity has 
no moral significance. If the size of the contribution is 
to measure goodness, then the poor widow with her two 
mites is contemptible! 

The beginning of goodness is to stand on one^s own 
feet. This requires moral stamina now that there are 
so many new ways of being a parasite. For your tainted 
news is a chmbing upon other people's backs, Mr. Editor. 
So is your secret rebate, Mr. Shipper; your stock juggle, 
Mr. Financier; your perfunctory supervision, Mr. Official; 
your whitewashing investigation, Mr. Legislator; your 
hold-up strike, Mr. Walking Delegate. 

"Bear ye one another's burdens " obscures the injunc- 
tion, "For every man shall bear his own burden." Gen- 
erosity, being genial and spectacular, is more prized than 
justice. A short cut to sainthood is to use your superi- 
ority in strength, cunning, or callousness to make others 
carry you; and then ostentatiously to shoulder the bur- 
dens of a few of the brethren. 

To stand on one's own feet is to abide by the rules of 
the game. The insurance men who buy a block of stock 
with the agreement that it is theirs if the price goes up, 
but the company's if the price goes down, the traffic 
men who withhold the f aciHties of a common carrier from 
rival coal operators, the candidate who nulhfies his 
pubHc pledges with a secret pledge, the editor who palms 
off paid stuff as editorial opinion, the preacher who lays 
away the sermons that might grate on the rich pew- 
holder, the professor of economics who shies from the 
"live wire" to burrow into the archaeology of his subject 



EDWARD A. ROSS 39 

— these commit breach of confidence. They are not 
pla3dng the game as it is generally imderstood. 

But the good man will help others, and when he comes 
to spend himself for others two paths are open. He 
may minister to the suffering, like the Red Cross nurse, 
or the charity worker; or he may uphold and improve 
the rules of the game. Though less picturesque, the 
latter way is none the less flinty. For ages the Good 
Samaritan has borne the palm. But what of the inspector 
who reports the scandalous state of affairs on the Jericho 
Road, even though the chances are his superiors will 
pigeonhole his report and dismiss him? What of the 
prosecutor who commits poHtical hara-kari in order to 
get the men "higher up" who protect and blackmail the 
thieves working the Jericho Road ? The Samaritan risked 
a big tavern bill; these risk a livelihood. Which is the 
better man? 

The lovers of men who give themselves to personal 
service are sainted. But the haters of iniquity who 
fight for right standards and laws — heading afresh the 
rivets that hold together the social fabric — miss saint- 
hood. They bear too many scars, are the target for too 
much filth, to vie in radiance with the gentle soul who 
comforts the aMcted but will not strike a blow for the 
right's sake. 

Nevertheless, now that we are in the civic stage, your 
saint "without an enemy in the world" is of less worth 
than the stalwart knight of conscience. For the one 
copes only with consequences, the other attacks causes. 
It is the difference between nursing the malaria-stricken 
and draining the swamp; between Father Damien devot- 
ing himself to the lepers on Molokai and the eight who 



40 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

let themselves be bitten by inflicted mosquitoes, to test 
Major Reed's hypothesis of the mosquito transmission 
of yellow fever. So to-day the self-sacrifice that yields 
an hundredfold is battling with the Midianites. And 
the lovers of men are finding it out. The good man 
starts out to clothe the naked and presently he is grap- 
pling with exploiters and vice caterers who produce more 
nakedness in a day than he can cover in a year. He sets 
forth to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and lo, he 
is fighting against child labor, or politics in the public 
schools. In the morning he goes abroad to heal the 
sick, by noon he is hammering quacks and food adul- 
terators and rookery landlords and medical institutes. 
Thus experience drives home the paradox that the 
supremacy of law, the triumph of truth and honesty in 
business and government, and the scientific adaptation 
of institutions to changing needs promote human welfare 
more than feeding to-day's hungry and nursing to-day's 
sick. 



THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN 

STEPHEN S. WISE 
Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York City 

(Extract from a baccalaureate sermon, preached at the Com- 
mencement of the University of Washington, Jmie ii, 1905,) 

The aims of the university are not so much leadership 
and service as leadership through service, the service of 
leadership. Democracy, the basis of the university, will 



STEPHEN S. WISE 41 

not perdure, nor idealism, the foster-child of the uni- 
versity, thrive unless from out the university there go a 
sense of leadership. President Butler of Columbia Uni- 
versity declared in the course of his inaugural address 
that "scholarship and service are the true university's 
ideal." Leadership is but another name for service; 
leadership is service in the highest and there is no other 
leadership worthy of the name. Only in the measure 
in which leadership becomes synonymous with service 
will the prophecy of a noted teacher of our day be veri- 
fied. "In the twentieth century the college man is to 
be more than ever before the leader of the world." 
Ich dieUj "I serve," inscribed on the coat-of-arms of 
the heir to England's throne, should be emblazoned on 
the banner borne aloft by the sons and daughters of the 
university. "Before honor goes humility"; before lead- 
ership goes service. Forget not Emerson's story of the 
reputed saint, who proved no saint because she scorned 
to do lowly service. It is commonly urged that the uni- 
versity graduate, the man of education, is selfish, passive, 
sterile. You, the scholars of the age, are to prove by 
leadership in service and the leadership of service that 
the man of education is unselfish and that his education 
is not passive and sterile, but positive and fruitful of the 
good. In the last few years, by reason of their highly 
disciplined sense of leadership, fortified by a lofty ideal- 
ism and a profound consecration, university men have 
rendered signal service to the state and to the smaller 
state of civic life. Seth Low rehabihtated the city gov- 
ernment of New York after years of misrule and shame. 
W. T. Jerome has once again made the law a terror to 
evil-doers, rich and poor, in New York. Schurman of 



42 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Cornell, Taft of Yale, Roosevelt of Harvard are helping 
to solve the problems of government and administration. 
You, young men and women of the university, are to 
be teachers, leaders and guides, furtherers, inspirers, and 
compellers of humankind. Into the world you go, 
apostles of democracy, prophets of ideahsm, evangels of 
consecration. In the closing scene of "Faust," some of 
you may remember, the soul of Faust is handed over to 
the care of Margaret, who earnestly asks how she is to 
conduct him to the highest peaks, and to her the answer 
comes, "Go up higher; he will follow thee." Go up 
higher; men will follow you. The race is waiting — and 
eager to be led — to follow whosoever will lead higher 
and ever higher. 



THE ATLANTIC FLEET IN THE PACIFIC 

JAMES N. GILLETT 
Governor of California 

(Condensed from a speech delivered at a banquet given in honor 
of the officers of the Atlantic Fleet, at San Francisco, May 7, 
1908.) 

On the sixteenth day of December, 1907, there assem- 
bled at Hampton Roads one of the most magnificent 
fleets ever congregated by any nation in the world. 
This magnificent fleet contemplated a voyage around the 
Horn, up the Pacific, a distance of over fifteen thousand 
miles. At that time, not only were the eyes of ninety 
million of Americans watching it with interest, but the 



JAMES N. GILLETT 43 

great nations of the world also were watching, and won- 
dering what the outcome would be of this marvelous 
voyage which soon was to commence. 

This great fleet started, not on a Journey of conquest, 
not looking for trouble, but a white fleet of peace, flying 
the Stars and Stripes, and saying to the nations of the 
world, "This represents the power and the dignity of 
the American Government." 

We watched its course with interest; we were pleased 
to note the fact when they passed the dangers of the 
Southern seas, and commenced to come up the Pacific. 
We greeted them with a hearty welcome on the 14 th of 
April, when they arrived in American waters and passed to 
anchor in San Diego harbor. The fleet remained the 
allotted time in the southland, and finally found its way up 
along the coast, and yesterday it appeared ofl the Heads, 
and at the appointed time, twelve o'clock noon, it passed 
through the Golden Gate into the greatest harbor in the 
world. 

I stood with pleasure, and inspired, too, on Point 
Bonita when it passed, although it was foggy and cloudy 
overhead. As it passed through there was a rift in the 
clouds and the golden simHght poured down on our ships 
as they passed through the Golden Gate and swung to 
the anchorage where they now He. 

There started in command of this fleet, and remained 
with it, one of the great figures of our country, a man that 
the people of this country love and respect, a man full of 
courage, a man who has all the commanding qualities of 
John Paul Jones, and a man who likewise said, as he came 
through the Golden Gate, "Do not give up the ship," and 
Admiral Evans did not give up the ship, sick as he was. 



44 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

With him as his aid, watching him night and day, 
following out his orders, obeying his commands, and 
loving him all the way round, and watching his sickness, 
were his admirals and the men in command, the officers 
of his fleet. They will be with us for some time now, 
and I want to say to you that the people of the whole 
United States are proud of the commanding officers of 
this magnificent fleet. We have every confidence in you. 
We know that as you tread upon these great, mighty 
engines of war, no matter in what chmate you may be, 
no matter where you may go, the Stars and Stripes that 
we give to you to indicate the nationality of the vessels 
that you command will be protected, and the dignity 
of this country will be maintained. 



THE AMERICAN NAVY 

VICTOR H. METCALF 
Former Secretary of the Navy 

(Condensed from a speech delivered at a banquet tendered him- 
self and the officers of the Atlantic Fleet, at San Francisco, May 
7, 1908.) 

Lying peacefully at anchor in the waters of San Fran- 
cisco Bay is the greatest fleet of war-ships ever assembled 
in American waters; they are the bulldogs of the Ameri- 
can navy — mighty engines of destruction when occasion 
requires. Now they are bent on a peaceful mission, and 
a mission that will result in much good to the service as 
well as to the nation at large. No one, after the generous 



VICTOR H. METCALF 45 

welcome accorded the officers and men at the various 
ports in South America, where the fleet stopped on its 
course from the Atlantic to the Pacific, can for one 
moment doubt the genuineness of the friendship of the 
people of certain of those republics for the American 
people. 

We have never sought and never will seek to build 
ourselves up by trying to pull others down. We are not 
seeking for new territory; but the events of the past 
few years have forced this country to the front, and we 
are to-day one of the great world powers. There is no 
danger of any power attacking us by land, for there is 
no power on the face of this globe that could for one 
moment maintain a footing on American soil. The 
danger, if any there be, will come from the sea, and it 
seems to me that it is clearly our duty to be in a constant 
state of preparation. We can assemble in a compara- 
tively short time a milHon or more fighting men, but we 
cannot improvise fleets, we cannot improvise officers and 
crews, nor can we improvise ammunition. It is neces- 
sary, therefore, that we always be prepared, for a well- 
equipped and well-manned navy is the surest guaranty 
of peace, and the safest and surest that this nation can 
have. 

Diplomacy is all right in its place, but that diplomacy 
which is backed up by a strong navy is bound in the 
long run to win out. There is no reason, it would natu- 
rally seem, why disputes between nations should not be 
settled in the same manner as disputes between indi- 
viduals; but until the great powers have agreed upon 
the estabHshment of an international court, and until 
they have agreed that all disputes of whatever nature 



46 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

or character shall be settled by that court, and have 
established the machinery also for carrying into effect 
the judgments and decrees of that court, it seems to me 
that it would be the height of folly for a great nation 
like the United States to leave itself open to attack. 

What we want is a navy commensurate with the dig- 
nity and honor of this nation; a navy not for conquest, 
but for protection, and a navy strong and powerful 
enough to ward off any attacks. And I say this, not 
because I want to foster or promote a miUtary spirit, 
but because I honestly and genuinely beUeve that if we 
want permanent peace the best way to obtain permanent 
peace is by always being ready for war. 



THE INITIATIVE OF THE PRESIDENT 

EMORY SPEER 
Federal District Judge, Southern District of Georgia 

(Extract from an address delivered at Yale University, May, 
1906.) 

It is sunset at Jolo and Zamboanga, and dawn on 
New England's rugged coast. The last glance of the 
god of day is reflected from the bayonet of the lonely 
sentinel who walks his beat on the uttermost island of 
that distant archipelago. The "rosy blush of incense- 
breathing morn" glorifies these historical waters, and 
the rushing floods of his oncoming light bathe the marble 
of that shaft in Washington which commemorates a 
nation's love for the Father of his Country. 



EMORY SPEER 47 

Throughout his diurnal progress, if progressive at all, 
that self-same orb has rejoiced that not for a moment 
has he been able to lose sight of the Stars and Stripes. 
In all his journey, there was nothing fairer or more 
enchanting than that city founded by the argonauts of 
'49, whose glories have been painted by the fascinating 
narrative of Stevenson, the witching fancy of Bret Harte. 
BriUiant, joyous, daring San Francisco, combining the 
enchantment of that city by the Seine, typical of all 
that is charming in the genius and love of beauty of the 
French people, with the oriental mysteries of Bagdad, 
in the palmy days of Haroun-al-Raschid. There one 
evening, Httle more than a month ago, as the sun sank 
behind the Farallones, it stood, instinct with life, energy, 
hope, and such happiness as is accorded to man. With 
the succeeding dawn its crumbling buildings were death- 
traps. Of its people many were dead, thousands in 
agony and despair, and, more terrible than all, was the 
glare and roar of the oncoming conflagration. A quarter 
of a milhon of men, women, children shiver on the hills 
hard by. The railroads have sunken into the earth, the 
earthquake has riven the water-pipes which bring the 
life-giving supply. There, too, were demons in human 
form. Such creatures, in the presence of helpless and 
suffering innocence, relapse to the cruelty, the merciless 
outrage of the savage. Has hope taken flight of earth ? 
Ah, no, there is yet hope. Across the continent there 
is one whose prompt soul is instinct with love and pity 
for his fellowmen. He is in the White House. The 
dreadful story comes. He takes counsel of his courage. 
Back flashes to a man after his own heart, the gallant 
Funs ton, "Take instant charge, declare martial law, 



48 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

suppress disorder, protect the people, use every arm of 
the service ashore and every ship upon the waters." 
Swift appeal is made to Congress. Nothing loath, that 
noble body throws open the treasury and disburses 
milUons to our suffering countrymen. And before the 
fires are extinguished and the subterranean forces of 
nature cease to mutter, order reigns in San Francisco, 
and the hearts of a noble people, inspired by the example 
of their President for their suffering brethren, pour out 
their treasures Hke water. And yet, in vain would a 
certain school of constructionists look for any word or 
syllable of the Constitution which justifies this or any 
similar action on the part of the President. Nor does 
this pass without attention. When the resolution is 
offered to appropriate two milHons for the sufferers, Mr. 
Williams, the leader of the minority, addressed the chair 
as follows, "Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield to 
me for a moment, I wish to say that this legislation is of 
such exceptional and emergency character, that it ought 
to override all preformed conclusions. For that reason 
I shall not object to unanimous consent for its considera- 
tion." Our countrymen will ever accord their respect 
to that sturdy minority which in the presence of an 
exigency so great has laid aside "preformed conclusions" 
and remembered only that they are Americans. But 
there is another view of it. 

It is true that we have a written Constitution, but the 
fundamental law is not all in the written page. Not- 
withstanding the "preformed conclusions" of the dis- 
tinguished leader of the minority and of men of every 
party who may think with him, it is with deference sub- 
mitted that indisputable precedents and the evolution 



EMORY SPEER 49 

of the American system authorizes the initiative of the 
President as the direct representative of the people in 
this case and in all equivalent cases, whether they affect 
the safety of that people, the peace of the United States, 
or the strength and honor of the nation itself. As the 
mischief of the old Constitution was weakness, the great 
desideratum of the new one was strength. As the old 
Constitution operated on the states, it was determined 
that the new one should operate immediately through 
its courts and executive upon the people. Fortunate is it, 
indeed, that a majority of Americans have beUeved with 
Sir James Mcintosh that "Constitutions are not made, 
they grow "; that they held, with St. Paul, "Not of the 
letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the 
spirit giveth Hfe." When the occasion arose even those 
leaders of strict construction, to whom that rule of inter- 
pretation was apparently as dear as papal infallibihty to 
the Holy See, swiftly pocketed their preformed con- 
clusions, trampled on their own doctrines, with vigor and 
celerity, and, as good Americans should do, acted for the 
incontestable interest of the country. 



CALIFORNIA AND WILLIAM H. TAFT 

GEORGE A. KNIGHT 

Of the San Francisco Bar 

(A speech seconding the nomination of Mr. Taft for President, 
at the Republican National Convention, Chicago, June 18, 1908.) 

Not many weeks ago, when the month of May was 
young in days, it was my privilege and pleasure to view 



50 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

one of the most impressive scenes that human eyes ever 
witnessed. Our naval fleet, Columbia's guardians of the 
peace of seas, had steamed their way from the Atlantic 
to our Golden Gate and dropped their anchors in the 
beautiful bay of San Francisco, an achievement without 
mishap and a voyage replete with the lesson of our mari- 
time power. The occasion turned back pages of half- 
forgotten history and flashed again on the horizon of the 
fiery sea all of the names of our naval heroes and their 
deeds of valor and the ships of their command. 

The panorama of that day will never be forgotten. It 
will Uve in type and ever be told in history and story. 
On the hills that slope toward the bay, half hidden in banks 
of golden poppies, half a milHon people sat as in a great 
dress circle and witnessed the coming of that most majestic 
power. The magnificent bay was transformed into a 
stadium and as each battle-ship passed through the Golden 
Gate, maintaining such an equaHtyof distance and pre- 
cision of military exactness that all wondered if it could 
be possible they were human and could hear commands. 
Amid blasts of whistles, music of bands, cheers of multi- 
tude, and joyous acclaim of thousands who cheered duty 
performed, Fighting Bob Evans dropped the anchor of 
his flag-ship and his active Hfe's work was done. Storm- 
tanned veteran of the sea, you passed the ensign of 
command to the next in fine and another page in history 
is honored by your name. 

From that imposing picture of beauty and instructive 
power I came here and stand to-day in this Republican 
Convention. The forum, where the story of our nation 
should be ever new, the click of the telegraph, and the 
descriptive type of a progressive press will bring to 



GEORGE A. KNIGHT $1 

homes of America the speeches that you heard to-day and 
the work done for our country's future. Here m this 
great amphitheater the Repubhcan party is in counsel 
with itself. 

This assemblage is an impressive one beyond power 
of words and its responsibihties beyond comprehension 
of any people save American. Four years ago in this 
CoHseum we met and nominated our candidate for Presi- 
dent. His strong individuahty, unimpeachable integrity, 
and recognized abiHty made him the popular idol of the 
people and the invincible leader. He has directed the 
course of our country through the troubled waters, as 
variable as human action and thought. His administra- 
tion has been as vivid and meteoric as the firing on Fort 
Sumter, and it has done as much for the stabiUty of our 
Government as the plenteous products of the mill, farm, 
and mine. 

And now the time has come for this historic organiza- 
tion to again choose an Executive whose fitness is up to 
the high standards of the past. It is not often that 
occasion calls upon experience to walk the path of high 
official life in true companionship, but forceful circum- 
stances writes at the most opportune time of WiUiam H. 
Taft as a leader of men. His personal character, blended 
with ability and experience, is a trinity of power that 
makes him a fit successor of those who have enriched our 
history with their patriotic lives. California joins in the 
nomination of WiUiam H. Taft, collegian, lawyer, judge, 
diplomat, true American, commended as our ideal leader 
of the host that shall ever be aggressive in the cause 
of individual Hberty, for the enforcement of all laws 
and the great advocate of the principles of the party 



52 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

of Union and progress. With such a leader we knew 
that ''the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh 
come." 



WILLIAM H. TAFT FOR PRESIDENT 

THEODORE E. BURTON 
Congressman from Ohio 

(Condensed from his speech nominating Mr. Taft for the presi- 
dency, at the Repubhcan National Convention, Chicago, June i8, 
1908.) 

Again Ohio presents a candidate to the National 
Republican Convention. In seven stubbornly contested 
presidential campaigns sons of her sacred soil have led 
the embattled Repubhcan hosts to victory. The Buckeye 
State has assuredly contributed her share of statesmen 
and generals for the upbuilding of the nation. But that 
of which we are prouder still is her stalwart citizenship 
— the mightiest bulwark of the republic in every com- 
monwealth made up of America's free yeomen, ever ready 
to respond to the tocsin of alarm in days of peril, or to 
crush corruption whenever it raises its menacing head. 
From this citizenship Ohio, in the supreme emergency of 
the Civil War, sent forth more than two hundred thousand 
soldiers for our country's defense, a formidable array 
easily surpassing in numbers the world- conquering legions 
of imperial Caesar, and even larger than any army ever 
mustered by Britain for the tented field. But tran- 
scendent above all is the fact that Ohio is one of a match- 



THEODORE E. BURTON 53 

less union of states linked together in everlasting bonds 
of amity and constituting an empire wonderful in power 
and most immeasurable in extent. Each sovereign state 
alone would occupy but a subordinate place in the great 
current of the world's events, but when represented by 
one of forty-six bright stars on a field of stainless blue, 
every one forms part of an emblem of union and of strength 
more beautiful far than the most brilHant constellation 
in the heavens. 

We welcome the friendly rivalry of candidates from 
other states — from the great Empire State, the Keystone 
State, Indiana, lUinois, and Wisconsin, forming with 
Ohio a broad expanse extending in unbroken sweep from 
old ocean to the uppermost bound of the greatest of 
inland seas. Each of these presents a leader among 
leaders whose achievements and renown are not confined 
to the narrow limits of a single commonwealth. To-day 
with fervid earnestness we wage a contest for the prize. 
To-morrow, imited for the fray and quickened by a com- 
mon fiery zeal, the champions of all the candidates will 
go forth with mounting enthusiasm to vanquish the foe. 

Secretary Taft has exceptional famiHarity with condi- 
tions in the distant Orient — in Japan, in China. We 
may rest assured that our traditional friendship with 
Japan will continue. Moreover, the future promises that 
the slumbering millions of China will awake from the 
lethargy of ages, and she then mil reaHze that the morn- 
ing dawn of fresher life and wider outlook comes to her 
across the broad Pacific, from free America, her truest 
friend and helper. We covet no portion of her territory. 
We desire from her, as from all nations, increased good- 
will and that mutual respect which knows neither bluster 



54 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

nor cringing on either side. Thus, in this new era of 
larger relations, Secretary Taft, with his comprehension 
of national and international subjects, would furnish a 
certainty of peace and sustained prestige. Under him, 
at home and ever3rwhere, this mighty people would have 
an assured confidence in the secure development and 
progress of the coimtry and would rest safe in the rehance 
that a Chief Executive was at the helm who, in peace or 
in war, would guide the destinies of the nation with a 
strong hand and with a gentle, patriotic heart. 

And so to-day, in the presence of more than ten thou- 
sand, and with the inspiring thought of the well-nigh 
ten thousand times ten thousand who dwell within our 
borders, I nominate for the presidency that perfect type 
of American manhood, that peerless representative of 
the noblest ideals in our national life, William H. Taft, 
of Ohio. 



WILLIAM J. BRYAN FOR PRESIDENT 

OLLIE M. JAMES 
Congressman from Kentucky 

(Condensed from his speech in seconding the nomination of Mr. 
Bryan for President, in the Democratic National Convention, 
Denver, Colorado, July lo, 1908.) 

The immortal spirits whose hands guided the infant 
steps of this repubUc, whose blood consecrated and made 
this land Liberty's dearest shrine, cry out to each of the 
miUions of voters into whose hands the future destiny 



OLLIE M. JAMES 55 

of this Union was lodged, ''Watchman, what of the night?" 
And, sir, from the orange groves of Florida to the waving 
wheat fields of the Northwest; from the nodding pines 
beyond the AUeghanies, across the Rockies to the slope 
by the peaceful sea, the men, with ballot in hand, eight 
miUion strong, answer, "The morning cometh," the 
morning of Democratic victory, the morning of the repub- 
lic's hope, as fresh with the dew of promise of the repub- 
lic, loved by every heart and defended by every hand, as 
when the dawn of Hberty first tinted the colonial skies, 
proclaiming the Golden Rule of all repubhcs, that this 
Government will not do for the greatest what it would 
deny to the himiblest; a Government which offers to the 
wearer of the crown of a king and to the bearer of the 
staff of the shepherd the same justice. 

Jefferson had the courage to write in front of a tyrant 
and his army the immortal words, "that governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
Bryan raised in front of the mightiest arm of predatory 
tyrants the world ever saw the commandment, "Thou 
shalt not steal." He foresaw the danger of monopoKes, 
combinations, and trusts long before his fellows. He was 
the pioneer in the wilderness. The path that he trod, 
hke the path always of the pioneer, was one red with 
blood and wet with tears, but his name lives, and though 
unable to convince the jury, which was packed and cor- 
rupted, his triimiph was greater than their verdict for 
him would have been, for he convinced his adversary of 
the righteousness of his cause. His voice has been 
raised for oppressed hmnanity in every state in the 
Union, and in lands lashed by the distant seas. He 
has charmed the common people of the earth, from far- 



56 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

away Russia round the globe, with the plain truth of 
democracy. He is the ablest, bravest, and most eloquent 
champion of the rights of the plain people that the sun 
shines on. He has been honored as no other American 
by all peoples in all lands, from the peasant who hopes 
for liberty to the king who fears it. 

I saw him measure with the great men of the earth. 
I saw him stand beside D'Estournelles de Constant, of 
France; Count Apponyi, of Hungary; Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman, of England; Baron Von Plener, of Austria; 
and there he stood — like Saul among his brethren — head 
and shoulders above them all. I saw him stand in the 
Royal Gallery by the Thames in London; I saw him there 
addressing the representatives of twenty-six nations of 
the earth. I heard him there plead for peace, within 
touch of Buckingham Palace, within hearing of the 
requiem sung for the sailor and soldier dead in West- 
minster Abbey; there, within sight of the statue of Richard 
Cceur de Lion, within hearing of the tramp of the King's 
army, and I was prouder of him than ever before, because 
he had proclaimed the doctrine of peace as no man before 
him ever had and as no man after him ever will. He 
does not belong to Nebraska; he does not belong to 
America; he belongs to humanity and to the world. 

Mr. Chairman, in the name of all men who ask no 
legislative aid in the conflict of life, those who only ask 
an equal chance with their brothers in the battle for 
bread; in the name of that immortal Democrat who 
hung high in the sky of our country the rainbow of prom- 
ise of "equal rights to all, and special privileges to none"; 
in the name of those millions of our countrymen who sing 
the songs of liberty in time of peace, and fight the battles 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 57 

of this republic in time of war; in the name of three 
million idle, hungry men with empty dinner-pails which 
have to be filled from trust-controlled products; in the 
name of men who love Hberty, and beheve republics 
were not born to die; in the name of the men who woo 
from the soil the substance which feeds and clothes the 
world; in the name of the millions of men in the shops 
and factories, at the anvil, the bench, the forge, and the 
spindle, who only beg this Government to be just enough 
to allow them to educate their children, serve their God 
and love their country; in the name of those who yet 
recall with the tingle of the blood the heroism of the 
fathers who gave this republic to us, I second the nomi- 
nation of the knightliest gladiator Democracy has ever 
known — William J. Bryan, of Nebraska. 



THE REPUBLICAN AND THE DEMOCRATIC 

PARTIES 

HENRY CABOT LODGE 

United States Senator from Massachusetts 

(A speech delivered at the Republican National Convention, 
Chicago, June 17, 1908, upon assuming the position of permanent 
chairman.) 

No political party in modern times can show such a 
record of achievement during the last fifty years as the 
RepubHcan party. Upon that record we can stand and 
challenge all comers to the Hsts. But it is well to remem- 
ber that the test we have to meet is much less severe. 



58 MIERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

This is a comparative world. We do not go forth to 
contest the great prize mth an ideal party, which we 
sometimes see beautifully depicted by persons of self- 
confessed superiority and chronic discontent. The gHt- 
tering abstraction which they present never existed yet 
on sea or land. It gleams upon us in printers' ink, but 
it has neither substance, nor organization, nor candidates, 
for organizations and candidates must be taken from the 
ranks of men and carmot be the floating phantoms of 
an uneasy dream. 

The American people must choose between us and the 
Democratic party. We differ from that party in some 
important particulars. We both, it is true, have a past 
and a history, but we treat those possessions very differ- 
ently. They \\dsh to keep their past a profound secret. 
We seek by all means to pubHsh ours to the world. If 
w^e refer to their history they charge us with calumny. 
We regard ours, truthful and undistorted, as our greatest 
glory. To the youth of the country they say, "Judge 
us solely by our undiscovered future." We say, "Read 
our record, judge us by our past and our present and from 
these learn what we are, what we have been, and what 
WT mean to be." Recall the cries which have sounded 
from the Ups of these two parties during the last half 
century. On the one side, "Slavery, secession, repudi- 
ation of the pubhc debt, fiat money, free trade, free 
silver, the overthrow of the courts and Government 
ownership." On the Repubhcan side, "Free soil, free 
men, the Union, the payment of the debt, honest money, 
protection to American industry, the gold standard, the 
maintenance of law, of order and of the courts, and the 
Government regulation of great corporations." The old 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 59 

shibboleths of the Democrats are to-day the epitaphs of 
policies which are dead and damned. They serve only 
to remind us of dangers escaped or to warn us of perils 
to be shunned. The battle-cries of the Republicans have 
been the watchwords of great causes. They tell of vic- 
tories won and triumphs tasted — they are embodied in the 
laws and mark the stepping-stones by which the republic 
has risen to even greater heights of power and prosperity. 

As we thus call up the past and the echoes of these old 
conflicts again sound in our ears and touch the chords 
of memory, one great fact stands forth, clear and shining. 
The Republican party has never failed except when it has 
faltered. Our long career of victory, so rarely broken, has 
been due to our meeting boldly each question as it arose, to 
our facing every danger as it crossed our path, with entire 
courage, fearless of consequences and determined only to 
be true to the principles which brought the party into exist- 
ence and to the spirit which has inspired it from its birth. 

We ask for the confidence and support of the American 
people because we have met the problems of the day and 
have tried patiently to solve them. We make our appeal 
with confidence because we have a well-defined policy 
and are not, like our opponents, fumbling in the dark 
to find some opinion on something. 

We beheve in the maintenance of law and order and 
in the support of the courts in all their rights and dignity. 
We believe in equal rights for all men and are opposed 
to special privileges for any man, or any class of men, 
high or low, rich or poor. We, who established the gold 
standard, are pledged to the cause of sound finance. We 
stand for protection to American industry and American 
labor, and we will resist all the assaults of free trade, 



6o AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

under whatever name it comes disguised. We will see 
to the defense of the country. We mean to have a navy 
worthy of the American name. We seek peace and 
friendship with all the nations, but alliance with none. 
Yet we have no intention of being a "hermit nation." 
The great services of the President to the world's peace 
will be continued by the party which he has led. We 
are a party fit to rule and govern, to legislate and admin- 
ister, and not a fortuitous collection of stone whose only 
form of thought or motion is to oppose. Above all, we 
are true to our traditions and to our past — true now, 
as we were in the days of Lincoln. 

In this spirit we must prevail — " by this sign " we 
must "conquer." 



"STAND PAT," SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY 

MORRIS SHEPPARD 

Congressman from Texas 

(The concluding part of a speech delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives January i6, 1907.) 

Accustomed to limitless and perpetual power, the 
Republican party has drifted into a complete paralysis, 
a hopeless inertia. "Stand pat" is merely another expres- 
sion for dry rot. Swollen with the spoils of ofiice, corpu- 
lent with the wine of power, distended with the dropsy 
of corruption, the Republican party drags its huge, 
infected body across the halls of state, helpless among 
the trophies of the past, powerless alike before the prob- 



MORRIS SHEPPARD 6l 

lems of the present and the retribution of the futui'e, 
while its coward Hps wail out, *' Stand pat, stand pat!" 
''Stand pat," although the pillage of the people never 
ceases; "stand pat," although the wealth of the repubHc 
is by a ruthless tariff law transferred from the milHons 
who support to the masters who exploit it; "stand pat," 
although the enormous rates incite the antagonism of the 
world and imperil our foreign trade; "stand pat," although 
McKinley pleaded from the door-step of the grave for 
lower tariffs; "stand pat," although patriotic Republicans 
of Massachusetts, Iowa, and all the country unite in the 
general prayer for less oppressive schedules; "stand pat," 
although our loftiest principle, the very soul of the repub- 
Hc, the principle in the name of which our country was 
consecrated in the blood and tears of patriots, the prin- 
ciple of government by the governed's will, has been 
abandoned in Repubhcan policies abroad; "stand pat," 
although the expenditure of the pubHc moneys has 
become a riotous dissipation, a wanton waste. 

A small but entirely sincere element of the people, in 
utter despair over Repubhcan conditions, have fallen 
into Sociahsm, into the violence and iconoclasm of ultra- 
radicahsm. In seeking a remedy for existing evils the 
Sociahst would give us still more serious ones. He would 
overturn the basic institutions of our civilization; he 
would uproot the foimdations of individuaHsm and free- 
dom. He forgets the lessons of history and the make-up 
of the human nature, for history and experience teach 
us that when the Government owns everything it is not 
long before somebody owns the Government. The 
Sociahst would aboHsh the private ownership of land. 
But without the private ownership of land, what would 



62 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

become of the individual ownership of home, the very 
corner-stone of civiHzation? Without the individual 
ownership of home, how long would the institution of 
marriage retain its sacredness? The glory of EngHsh 
liberty, our brightest heritage, has proceeded from the 
sanctity which has ever surrounded the humblest English 
home. Said Chatham, in the British ParHament, "The 
poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the 
forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; 
the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; 
the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot 
enter! All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the 
ruined tenement." What sacredness would attach to a 
so-called home in which a man knew that every other 
man in the country, of whatever race, had an equal 
interest? Socialism would wreck our civiHzation and 
remit us to savagery. 

The Democratic party would apply to society and its 
varying emergencies the principles of equaHty and brother- 
hood, the principles which its founder embodied in the 
Declaration of Independence, and which constitute the 
underlying spirit of American institutions. They tell us 
that the Democracy changes its issues at each election. 
We answer that the basic principle of the Democracy, 
the principle of equal rights, never changes, although its 
appHcation to new conditions naturally develops new 
measures, and that thus the Democracy keeps step with 
time. Thus the Democracy applies an eternal principle to 
unfolding events. Thus it adopts new measures when new 
measures are necessary to the application of this principle. 
Thus it occupies a rational middle ground between the 
ultra-conservatism, which would preserve existing con- 



THOMAS E. WATSON 6$ 

ditions at any cost, and the ultra-radicalism which would 
overturn the foundations of society. We say to the Re- 
pubHcan stand-patter/' You cannot arrest the tide of prog- 
ress; the tariff must be revised, the doctrine of government 
by the governed's will must be restored, economy must be 
practised in the Government expenditure." We say to the 
SociaHst, "You cannot uproot the fimdamental institu- 
tions of home and land and property without precipitating 
both anarchy and savagery." Paraphrasing the idea of 
another, the situation may be thus described: Plutocracy 
and Republicanism say," Stand pat; let evils rage " ; Social- 
ism shouts, "Pull down the temple, though it crush us in 
its fall"; the Democracy, applying the deathless principle 
of equal rights, cries to all the struggling race of man, 
"Forward, march; keep a just and even step with time." 



POPULISM 

THOMAS E. WATSON 
Editor of "The Jeffersonian," Thomson, Georgia 

(Extract from his speech in accepting the nomination for Presi- 
dent as candidate of the People's party, 1908.) 

"History repeats itself," and to-day we have in our 
own repubhc every abuse against which the Roman 
populares made war. 

Our public domain has been preyed upon by milHon- 
aire plunderers and land-grabbing corporations until the 
American people have been stripped of a territory larger 
than that over which soars the black eagle of Germany. 



64 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

In all directions the terrific energy of the corporation has 
driven the public off the public domain. Our streets 
have been seized by telegraph, telephone, and railroad 
companies. The iron horse monopolizes the main line 
of public travel, and, instead of belonging to the pubhc, 
as it should, the horse, as well as the vehicle and the 
road, is private property. 

Antiquity was scandahzed when Cleopatra dissolved 
and drank a pearl valued at four hundred thousand 
dollars; and historians comment in a tone of rebuke upon 
the luxuries of Lucullus, who spent eight thousand five 
hundred dollars on a feast. When one of our American 
miUionaires throws open the grand ball-room for a night 
of revelry, the flowers cost more than the feast of Lucullus. 
And when one of our Cleopatras fancies that she is fasci- 
nated by some roving Mark Anthony — some Enghsh 
duke, ItaHan prince, French count, or Hungarian sneeze- 
weed — she thinks nothing of spending from one to five 
million dollars on the "Pearl." In Cleopatra's case the 
gem was merely a casual product of nature; in the modern 
instances every dollar that goes abroad to pay for foreign 
titles and minister to the depraved appetites of aristo- 
cratic debauches is the product of the American laborer^ s 
toil. 

The Latins sunk under the weight of special privilege. 
But we Americans are descendants of the Teutonic 
peoples — a stronger race than the Latins. It was the 
victory of our heroic ancestors in the woods of Germany 
— annihilating the Roman force — that called to the lips 
of the Emperor Augustus the cry, "Oh, Varus, give me 
back my legions!" And if we tamely submit to the 
financial aristocracy which erects its strongholds upon 



THOMAS E. WATSON 6$ 

the heights of special privilege and from these lofty 
battlements sends forth the marauding statutes that 
hold us up on every highway and rob us of what is ours 
— if we )deld to those insolent and insatiable plutocrats 
without a fight, we will be the first branch of the great 
Teutonic family that ever disgraced itself by such a 
pusillanimous surrender. 

I, for one, am proud of a record of prolonged, con- 
sistent, and determined battle against the infamous class 
legislation whose yoke we bear. And because of this 
record and because my comrades call me, and because 
of the memory of the thousands of the men of the Old 
Guard of Popuhsm who as long as they Uved stood by 
me, and beheved in me and loved me, and because the 
monitor that speaks to me from within says, Do it, I 
accept the nomination which my party has tendered. 

In ancient times they had no easy way of making a 
fire. Yet it happened, time and again, that there was 
no light to be had. The fires had been neglected, every- 
where, and the whole nation found itself in darkness. 
In Rome the preservation of the fire was given a sacred 
character; a temple was built for the service, and those 
who were set apart to feed the flame were consecrated 
as to a religious duty. Within the temple, night and 
day, winter and summer, year in and year out, the vestal 
virgin watched her sacred flame. Roman eagles might 
be flying to the uttermost ends of the earth; Roman 
legions might be camping on the distant Rhine, or chasing 
Picts and Scots to the Grampian Hills, or forming lines 
of battle upon the Euphrates — but in the temple, at 
Rome, would be found the eternal fire, with the vestals 
feeding it, night and day. 



66 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Ob^ my countrymen! Each of us is a temple, within 
each of us was Ut the sacred fire, within each of us are 
the better angels of our nature, whose eternal vigilance 
is needed to keep the temple pure and the light trimmed 
and burning. Let us, then, consecrate the temple; keep 
pure and perpetual the vestal service; for it is moral 
death to the individual to neglect the fire; it is moral 
death to the nation to lose the Hght. 



SOCIALISM 

EUGENE V. DEBS 
Socialist-Labor catididate for President, igo8 

(Extract from a speech delivered at Girard, Kansas, May 23, 
1908. ) 

It is a basic economic proposition that as long as a 
relatively few men own the railroads, the telegraph, the 
telephone, own the oil fields and the gas fields and the 
steel mills and the sugar refineries and the leather tan- 
neries — own, in short, the sources and means of life — 
they will corrupt our poUtics, they will enslave the work- 
ing class, they will impoverish and debase society, they 
will do all things that are needful to perpetuate their 
power as the economic masters and the poHtical rulers 
of the people. Not until these great agencies are owned 
and operated by the people can the people hope for any 
material improvement in their social condition. 

Now we Sociahsts propose that society in its collective 
capacity shall produce, not for profit, but in abundance 



EUGENE V. DEBS 67 

to satisfy human wants; that every man shall have the 
inalienable right to work, and receive the full equivalent 
of all he produces; that every man may stand fearlessly 
erect in the pride and majesty of his own manhood. 

Every man and every woman will then be econom- 
ically free. They can, without let or hindrance, apply 
their labor, with the best machinery that can be devised, 
to all the natural resources, do the work of society and 
produce for all; and then receive in exchange a certificate 
of value equivalent to that of their production. Then 
society will improve its institutions in proportion to the 
progress of invention. Whether in the city or on the 
farm, all things productive will be carried forward on a 
gigantic scale. All industry will be completely organized. 
Society for the first time will have a scientific foundation. 

We are not going to destroy private property. We are 
going to establish private property — all the private 
property necessary to house man, keep him in comfort, 
and satisfy his wants. Eighty per cent of the people of 
the United States have no property to-day. A few have 
got it all. 

Competition was natural enough at one time, but do 
you think you are competing to-day? Many of you 
think you are competing. Against whom? Against 
Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow 
and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas 
City. That is about the way you are competing; but 
your boys will not have even that chance — if capitahsm 
lives that long. 

I am not a prophet. I can no more penetrate the 
future than you can. I do study the forces that underlie 
society and the trend of evolution. I can tell by what 



68 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

we have passed through about what we will have in the 
future; and I know that capitaHsm can be abolished and 
the people put in possession. Now, when we have taken 
possession, and we jointly own the means of production, 
we will no longer have to fight each other to live; our 
interests, instead of being competitive, will be cooperative. 
We will work side by side. Your interest will be mine 
and mine will be yours. That is the economic condition 
from which will spring the humane social relation of the 
future. 

When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching 
each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving 
each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and 
be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, 
and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization 
the human race has ever known. 



AMERICANISM 

GUY CARLETON LEE 

Lecturer and Publicist 

(Excerpt from his lecture, "When the People Wake," delivered 
on various occasions from the Lyceum platform.) 

If we reject sociaKsm, communism, individualism, and 
monarchism, as plans for the bettering of the condition 
of society, what have we left? I can answer you: We 
have something better than communism as it has been 
practised; better than socialism as to-day taught; better 
than individualism as it is urged by the class; better than 



GUY CARLETON LEE 69 

monarchism, always a failure. What we have is so 
powerful that it will overcome existing evils and cure 
discontent; it is so powerful that it will remove the cause 
of unrest and give to the people the justice they deserve 
— it is Americanism. 

Yes, not in a theory of another day and of another 
country can we find complete reHef in this our time of 
need; but we can turn confidently to Americanism, and in 
it find the salvation of the nation. How is Americanism 
made up? From sociaHsm it takes its fine regard for 
the rights of the minority, the weak, the inefficient. It 
takes also from sociahsm its theory that society, as such, 
deserves the first consideration of its members; its formu- 
lary that we owe to our neighbors duties the like of which 
we consider that they owe us — honesty, kindness, love. 
These things we take from sociaHsm, for they are abiding 
principles of social happiness and man is a social creature. 

From individuahsm we take the bold initiative that 
is not bound by tradition, but is continually reaching 
out to labor into new fields of endeavor. We take, too, 
the desire to better the condition of the individual, for 
from such desire springs material and intellectual advance- 
ment. We take also, but under control of the state, its 
system of rew^ards and punishments attending the suc- 
cess or failure of personal effort. From monarchism we 
take the prompt and strict enforcement of law, the effect- 
ive ownership of pubHc utilities. This composite — this 
blending of the best from all theories of government is 
Americanism, and when the people awake to the full 
threat of the danger that confronts them, to the full 
force of the strength that hes wdthin them, we shall see 
them triumphant through Americanism. 



70 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



SOCIAL IDEALISM 

SHAILER MATHEWS 
Dean of the Divinity School, University of Chicago 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, 
New York, July 29, 1909.) 

Jesus taught a social idealism based upon the absolute 
kingdom of God, and one to be realized by God-like, 
loving men. This is the social teaching of Jesus, and 
already there are men and women who are endeavoring 
to incorporate into their lives the principles of that abso- 
lute social order. 

Do things even to the loss of your rights rather than 
prostitute your loving nature. There are some who say 
that this principle of love is to be erected into a social 
system, but Jesus is not talking about a social system, 
but about individuals. It is supreme ideaHsm, abso- 
lutely without modification, if men are going to be sons 
of God. And that is the great question which Jesus 
raises. Does Jesus beUeve that all men are going to 
become sons of God, in the sense that he means? The 
only answer which he gives is that they must become 
loving if they would be his sons. The recognition of the 
principle of love, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, is the 
one thing that Jesus wants to bring into society. In his 
own case he makes no compromise. His Ufe is the abso- 
lute expression of love. That does not mean that we 
are to do the things that he did. But we must have the 
same quality of life, the same willingness to take up the 
cross even to Calvary rather than give up this conviction 



SHAILER MATHEWS 71 

which is the greatest in the world. If you can get that 
principle to work in your Ufe it is easy to see what will 
be the result. Jesus has no social teaching for anyone 
save those who will come under the Golden Rule. The 
first thing is for the sick man to be cured before he can 
do a well man's work. You cannot make a regenerate 
society out of imregenerate people. You cannot put 
this ideal in a society that prefers force to love, and 
mammon to God. 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM 

RAY STANNARD BAKER 
Of the editorial staff of the '^American Magazine^' 

(Extract from an address at the Massachusetts Agricultural 
CoUege, Amherst, Massachusetts, October 31, 1909.) 

In the spring of 1894 I went as a newspaper corre- 
spondent to march with Coxey's famous army of the 
unemployed, of which you may have heard. It was a 
tatterdemahon crowd of some four himdred men which 
started from Ohio and marched through the country to 
Washington to demand work of the Government. They 
were a ragged, miserable lot; and yet after two months 
with them, seeing them at night around their camp-fires 
or side by side with them during their long, straggling, 
tiresome marches, I came to know many of them well. 
I learned the stories of their lives. I felt the difiiculties 
they had to meet. And the more I saw, the more my 
feehng of anger and sorrow grew that such things could 



72 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

be in a great, rich, powerful, prosperous nation like 
ours — a nation with the richest men in the world in 
it, with the most productive farms and mines, with 
plenty for all — if only all could share in it. There 
was something wrong when some men could live in pal- 
aces and eat at each meal food which costs several days 
of hard toil for some working man, while others starved 
and went ragged. Something was wrong — wrong. A 
nation that glittered as ours did outwardly, and per- 
mitted such suffering and want and sorrow to exist under- 
neath, was not right within itself. 

These were troublous times, you say, times of panic, 
hard times, and failures. They were, indeed, but I could 
take you to-night to places in New York city, where 
you would find ragged men and women shivering in 
the cold, and hungry for food. In hundreds of homes 
in New York city to-day, in a time of rampant pros- 
perity, the children have not had enough to eat, and 
they will go shivering to-morrow morning because they 
haven't enough good clothes to keep them warm. These 
are plain, hard, every-day facts. 

At first when I saw these conditions I couldn't explain 
them. I knew that they were wrong — but what was 
to be done about them? Then I began to get a true 
glimpse of our civilization. I saw how men and women 
were fighting one another for bread and clothing and 
fuel — fighting like beasts in the jungle — and how a 
few strong men who had superior ability in the direction 
of making money, or pihng up money, or who had never 
done a stroke of work for it at all, but had inherited it, 
had seized upon much of the most valuable land of the 
country, had got possession of the water-powers, the 



RAY STANNARD BAKER 73 

machinery, the railroads, and the coal mines, and were 
making other people work for them, and taking a great 
deal more than their share of the products of that work. 
And, of course, in such a jungle fight, the strong got 
most of the food and clothing — far more than they 
needed — and many little children, many women, many 
weak men, because they couldn't fight as hard as the 
others, had to go hungry and cold. 

I wondered if this jungle fight was the only way of 
life in a great and civilized nation like ours. And it 
was then that I began to see clearly the true meaning 
of that greater law which I had heard about ever since 
I was a small boy, but which I never had understood. 
I am not much of a churchman to-day, but let me say 
with all the force I have in me that I believe the solution 
of the problem is where I then found it, in the words of 
the Great Teacher, "He that is greatest among you, 
let him be as he that doth serve." In other words, let 
the strong not crush the weak, but serve the weak. "Do 
unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." 
In other words, let the fit do by the starving and ragged 
imfit as they would be done by. "Let the strong bear 
the burdens of the weak." 

Let us see, then, how we really do treat our weak 
ones. Take, for example, the children of the poor. How 
do we treat them? There are hundreds and thousands 
of children in this coimtry who are being used up and 
worn out before they have attained their growth. We 
are so anxious to make money out of our cotton cloth, 
our coal, our glass products, and so on, that we are yearly 
ruining thousands of helpless children. Take another 
weak element of our population — the foreigner. How 



74 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

do we treat him? Briefly, we make him work just as 
hard as we can for just as low wages as possible, because 
he is poor and ignorant and weak. We who are strong 
take from him to the Hmit of our ability. 

So we might go on asking our question, "How do you 
treat the Httle ones and the weak ones? " But enough has 
been said, perhaps, to make the point I wish to make 
strongly here, that while we are a great, rich, prosperous 
nation, we are not meeting as we should the true test 
of greatness. 



FROM THE TOP OF THE WASHINGTON 
MONUMENT 

HENRY B. r. MACFARLAND 

President of the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. 

(The concluding part of an address delivered on "District of 
Columbia Day," at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 
Missouri, October 19, 1904.) 

The calm height of the Washington Monument is a 
good place from which to see things in proper proportion 
as with the serene eye of history. It is a place for opti- 
mism, not for pessimism. As we look westward up the 
picturesque Potomac, curving under the setting sun- 
beams, we remember that George Washington looked 
with the eye of faith from those heights to that promised 
land beyond the horizon, beyond the Alleghanies, which 
he wanted the United States to occupy, and we remember 
how, slowly but surely, in spite of all difl&culties, the 



HENRY B. F. MACFARLAND 75 

thought of that first great American expansionist has 
been carried out until American principles, represented 
by the American flag, have been planted in the islands of 
the sea, in the uttermost parts of the earth, far beyond 
his farthest dream. Looking southward, toward his 
home and tomb at Mount Vernon, we recall how his 
ideals of repubHcan freedom, his example as a Revolu- 
tionary patriot, brought a score of republics into being 
out of the monarchical possessions south of us, and how 
his teachings made the United States the protector and 
the friend of every one of them without making the United 
States the enemy of any other country. As we turn to 
the eastern windows, looking out beyond the hills of 
Maryland toward the Atlantic Ocean, we see the Uving 
influence of Washington in the republic of France, in 
the freedom which has spread through all western Europe, 
in the democracy and liberty of the British Isles. At 
The Hague we see enthroned by the public opinion of 
civiUzed nations his teaching of international justice as 
the means of keeping the peace of the world — that doc- 
trine which, by Washington's direction, John Jay embodied 
in the famous treaty with England, then denounced, now 
admired, the first treaty in which that principle was 
found. Far to the northward we see our sister state of 
Canada, self-governing, American in all but form and 
name, revering Washington and Hving out his deepest 
teachings. 

We can trace from this high point the way in which 
our own nation has been led, through the wrongs and the 
dangers that we have passed, even through the awful 
sufferings and sacrifices of the Civil War, into larger oppor- 
tunities, greater responsibihties, and a more splendid 



76 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

renown. It is a cure for discouragement to reflect at the 
top of the Washington Monument upon the progress of 
the nation of Washington under the inspiration of his 
principles and his career. 

Even though clouds cover the zenith, even though rain 
falls from their darkness, the sun shining over Arlington 
Heights, where we can see the graves of men who died 
that the repubHc might Hve, arches the Capitol with a 
splendid rainbow, the perpetual reminder of the promises 
of God. Taking the larger view of our country and its 
relation to the world, facing the new occasions and their 
new duties, appreciating that we have been brought into 
unique leadership among the nations and with ahen 
peoples, adding to our imsettled questions at home even 
greater questions abroad, we see clouds of darkness over 
us, and even the rain falUng upon us; but we also see shin- 
ing through the rain the rays of the Sun of Righteousness 
turning the drops into the rainbow of the covenant of 
God, that those who obey shall be sustained, and we 
remember all the years of the right hand of the Most 
High. It is in this that our hope lies, as all our msest 
men confess. Not by our might, not by our wisdom — 
no, "but my Spirit," saith the God of our fathers. With- 
out Him our efforts are but losing. With Him we may 
be sure of success. 



JOHN SHARP Wn^LIAMS 77 



THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 

JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS 

United States Senator from Mississippi 

(Extract from an address before Company "A," Confederate 
Veterans, at Memphis, Tennessee, May 31, 1904.) 

The world has witnessed some great battle charges 
in its day. Our white race has made them; the charge 
of the French cavalry at Austerlitz, of Napoleon's Old 
Guard at Waterloo; the perhaps equally great counter- 
charge of the English Horse Guards at the same place; 
the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, immortal 
in itself and rendered metrically immortal in the minds 
of men by Tennyson's stirring lines; the unavailing 
charge of the English at the battle of New Orleans; 
the charge of the Mamelukes — white slaves, as they 
were — upon Napoleon's squares in the shadow of the 
pyramids — all these recur to the mind. But where, in 
all the history of all the charges, do you find exploits 
comparable to those beginning at Savage Station and 
continuing on through the seven days and ending at 
Malvern Hill; to that of the Texans, when they told 
Lee to go to the rear, in the wilderness; to that suicidal, 
murderous, and unavaiHng onslaught of the Confederate 
infantry upon the breastworks of Franklin; and above 
all, to that of Pickett and his men at Gettysburg ? I can 
see them now: the reluctantly obedient and sullen corps 
commander sitting upon the fence; Pickett saluting and 
asking, "General, shall I carry my men in?" Long- 
street's bowing without a word. I can hear the Vir- 



78 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

ginian giving his orders, see him in his place with head 
bowed, see the sweep of the Hne without a break, as it 
goes across and up the long slope, the orders almost 
noiselessly passed to close up, as the artillery, and later 
the musketry, tear the ranks to pieces; I can see the 
long slope from one end of that gray Une to the other, 
marked in the course of its march by the dead and dying; 
I can see the few who attained the height vaulting, sword 
in hand, or with clubbed musket, into the enemy's en- 
trenchment; I can see them looking about to find them- 
selves surroimded by blue-coated soldiers, more than 
enough without arms to have tied them with pocket 
handkerchiefs; I can see those few — oh, so few — look- 
ing back over that long, long slope to find not one gray 
coat in sight for a support — Lee's orders not carried 
out; I see them then, despair of desperation settHng 
upon them, some surrendering and some beginning to 
break back to the Confederate line. I can hear later 
the anguished and agonizing reproach of Pickett, when 
he states to General Lee that his magnificent division 
has been swept out of existence, and I can hear Lee, 
with a greatness of soul, a magnanimity of which he 
alone was capable, saying, "Never mind. General, it 
has all been my fault," and to the men, "You must help 
me get out of this as best we can." In comparison with 
this demonstration of the courage of the soldier and the 
magnanimity of the leader, what could you quote from 
all history? But, my friends, if the critics were right 
about the elan of the Southerner on the charge, they 
were wrong about his capacity for standing punishment 
on the defense. Witness Jackson and his Virginians at 
First Manassas; witness Stonewall Jackson again with 



JOHN SHARP Wn^LIAMS 79 

his division nearly a whole day waiting for Longstreet 
at Second Manassas; witness Southern resistance at the 
"bloody angle," and upon the reformed lines of entrench- 
ment back of it at Spottsylvania; witness Second Cold 
Harbor, where the Federal private soldier, of his own 
accord, refused to obey orders to charge again against 
the impregnable resistance of the Southerners. The 
dogged, patient, steadfast courage of Wellington and the 
British soldiers at Torres Vedras, great as it was, pales 
ineffectually in the Hght of the suffering, patience, stead- 
fastness to the end, displayed by the soldiers of the 
Confederacy at Vicksburg and at Petersburg. What sol- 
diers they were! And bear in mind, my friends, that 
"soldiering " was not their business. They fought neither 
for love of it, nor for pride in a soldier's profession, nor 
from the mere habit of soldierly obedience, nor for pay 
in money which was worthless, nor for "provant," which 
was Httle. Soldiering, I say, was not his business. He 
was a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, sometimes 
even a preacher, as brave General Leonidas Polk and 
General Gregg, both bishops, were. But when called 
upon to become, for the time being, for his country's 
sake, a' soldier, he became such a soldier that the world 
has never seen his like. 



8o AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE UNION SOLDIER 

JOHN M. THURSTON 
Former United States Senator from Nebraska 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the Michigan 
Club, Detroit, Michigan, February 21, 1890. This extract, though 
in part different from the one usually given, is already familiar as 
a declamation for students, but it is included here as a companion 
selection to the preceding.) 

Sometimes, in passing along the street, I meet a man 
who, in the left lapel of his coat, wears a Httle, plain, 
modest, unassuming brass button. The coat is often 
old and rusty, the face above it seamed and furrowed 
by the toil and suffering of adverse years, perhaps beside 
it hangs an empty sleeve, and below it stumps a wooden 
peg. But when I meet the man who wears that button, 
I doff my hat and stand uncovered in his presence — 
yea! to me the very dust his weary foot has pressed is 
holy ground, for I know that man, in the dark hour of 
the nation's peril, bared his breast to the hell of battle 
to keep the flag of our country in the Union sky. 

Maybe at Donaldson he reached the inner trench; at 
Shiloh held the broken line; at Chattanooga climbed 
the flame-swept hill, or stormed the clouds on Lookout 
Heights. He was not born or bred to soldier hfe. His 
country's summons called him from the plow, the forge, 
the bench, the loom, the mine, the store, the office, the 
college, the sanctuary. He did not fight for greed of 
gold, to find adventure, or to win renown. He loved 
the peace of quiet ways, and yet he broke the clasp of 



JOHN M. THURSTON 8i 

clinging arms, turned from the witching glances of tender 
eyes, left good-bye kisses upon tiny Hps, to look death 
in the face on desperate fields. 

And when the war was over he quietly took up the 
broken threads of love and Hfe as best he could, a better 
citizen for having been so good a soldier. 

The men who wear the button are dropping away 
one by one, and in a few more years they will all have 
answered to Heaven's reveille, but their sons remain. 
Their sons remain, not only to enjoy the heritage of 
good government, prosperity, and peace, but to follow 
the precedents their fathers set. 

I remember one. In November, 1864, the Union pris- 
oners in Andersonville held an election in all due form 
of law. News had reached them from beyond the lines 
that the RepubUcan party had renominated Abraham 
Lincoln upon a platform which declared for the prosecu- 
tion of the war to the bitter end. They had heard that 
the Democrats had nominated George B. McClellan on 
a platform which declared the war a failure, and called 
for the cessation of hostilities. They knew that McClel- 
lan's election would result in a speedy exchange of pris- 
oners, and a return to home. How much that meant 
to a man penned up there, God only knows. To walk 
once more the shady lane; to see the expectant faces of 
love in the open door; to hold against his breast the one 
woman whose momentary embrace seemed more to him 
than hope of heaven does to you and me; to raise in 
yearning arms the sturdy boy who was a baby when his 
father marched away: it meant this — and it meant 
more. It meant life, and hope, and home, and love, 
and peace — for him; but for the flag, dishonor, and for 



82 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the Union, dissolution. The reelection of Abraham Lin- 
coln meant the indefinite continuance of the war, pro- 
longed captivity, suffering, and death amid the horrors 
of Andersonville. They knew the issue, and they sol- 
emnly prepared to meet it on that election morning. A 
mock election, say you? Yes, a mock election. Its 
result would never be returned to swell the grand total 
of loyal votes in Liberty's land, but in the golden book 
of Hfe, that mock election is recorded in letters of eternal 
splendor. They took for their ballot-box an old tin 
coffee-pot; their ballots were army beans. A black bean 
was for Lincoln, the Republican party, the flag, and the 
Union, but the man who cast it could never expect to 
see home, wife, or babies any more. A white bean was 
for McClellan, the Democratic party, the Union sacri- 
ficed, its flag in the dust, but it also was a promise to 
those despairing men of all most dear to human hearts. 
Some walked to the polls, some crawled there, and some 
were borne in the tender arms of loving comrades, and 
with the last expiring breath of life dropped in the bean 
that registered a freeman's will. And when the sun had 
set and the glory of evening filled the sky, eager hands 
tore off the Hd and streaming eyes, looking therein, saw 
that the inside of the old coffee-pot was as black as the 
face of the blackest contraband with votes for Abraham 
Lincoln. 

God bless the men who wore the button! They pinned 
with bayonets the stars of Union in the azure of our 
flag, and in blood made atonement for a nation's sin. 
They supplemented "Yankee Doodle" with "Glory, 
Hallelujah," and Yorktown with Appomattox. Their 
powder woke the morn of universal freedom and made 



BEN B. LINDSEY 83 

the name "American" first in all the earth. To us 
their memory is an inspiration and to the future it is 
hope. 



THE BOY AND THE JUVENILE COURT 

BEN B. LINDSEY 
Judge of the Juvenile Court of Denver, Colorado 

(Condensed from the concluding part of an address before the 
National Conference of Charities and Correction, at Atlanta, Geor- 
gia, May, 1903.) 

Boys have feelings. They like to have friends. There 
isn't much use to try to arouse pride unless there be 
someone whom they want to please and, in pleasing, will 
in turn be pleased. If they have no friends, the first thing 
to do is to supply the friend, and the pride, in most cases, 
will come out. If they have the wrong kind of friends, 
it is a good thing to quietly supply the right kind. 

Take the case of Micky. Before Micky got in the 
juvenile court one of the Denver papers had pubKshed 
his picture with a graphic account under the double- 
leaded head-Une, "The Worst Kid in Town." Micky 
had feelings. He made the paper so much trouble that 
they finally gave him a job. One unlucky day, however, 
as he himself explains it, he got "canned." After he 
was placed on probation, he was arrested on a false sus- 
picion, as he stated to me, "simply because the bull had 
to pinch somebody and he pinched me because he had 
been reading the PosV^ (the offending newspaper). The 



84 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

result was a second article entitled, *'The Misfortunes of 
Micky," in which it was announced that he had been 
sent to the Reform School. Micky was simply the victim 
of a newspaper exaggeration, as other distinguished 
people have been before. He came to me in a great 
state of perturbation the next day, with the offending 
paper in his hand. He said, "Judge, just look at dat." 
I read rather surprisedly that I had committed Micky 
to the Industrial School. "Well," I said, "Charhe, this 
is very distressing." "Yes," he said, "I knowed it was 
a lie when I seed it, but," he said, the tears welhng in 
his eyes, "dat ain't de worst of it. Deys done gone and 
put it on the sporting page, and all my friends will see 
it." Now, Micky's friends were among the sporting 
fraternity. If there was a prize-fight on, before Micky 
got in the juvenile court — and the poHce would have 
you beheve, even after — Micky was there if he had to 
go in through the roof. He is now a special probation 
officer in the juvenile court and very proud of his job. 
He can "keep tab" on more bad kids than the entire 
poUce force. He says himself that he has "done reformed 
long ago," and I am incHned to credit his statement. 

The best way to reform a boy waywardly disposed is 
first to understand him. You have got to get inside of 
him and see things through his eyes, understand his 
motives, have sympathy and patience with his faults, 
just as far as you can, remembering that more can be 
accompUshed through love than by any other method. 

One trouble is that we do not think. Victor Hugo did 
not suffer from this short-coming to which we are all 
more or less victims. Nearly one hundred years ago a 
Paris newspaper contained an item (as far as the prin- 



BEN B. LINDSEY 85 

ciple is involved) seen in our city newspapers almost any- 
day: A boy had been arrested, tried, and incarcerated 
for stealing a loaf of bread. How many thousands of 
readers glanced over that item without another thought. 
Yet it was the suggestion, to one who did think, for a 
story of life that thrilled the heart of the world. It is 
all right to sympathize with Jean Valjean. And yet no 
code of ethics or morals will justify, or ought to justify, 
what he did. The trouble in Jean Valjean's case was 
that justice was not done. There should have been 
justice to the boy who stole. There should have been 
justice to the man who, in the sweat of his brow, and by 
his own labor, had produced that loaf of bread. Sup- 
pose he had forty loaves as the result of a day's work, 
and forty Jean Val jeans had appeared upon the scene. 
He may have had hungry children of his own to feed. 
The judge was no better or worse than the people or 
the system under which he lived and acted. The rights 
and duties of each were not adjusted to each other. 
There was neither harmony nor justice. Jean Valjean 
should have been corrected, but corrected with the love 
and tenderness of our Saviour as He would have cor- 
rected him. Would He have told Jean it was right to 
steal that bread? No. The Master would have said, 
"Thou shalt not steal." He would have forgiven him. 
He would have assisted him, so that he could accompHsh 
lawfully what he had done unlawfully. That is what the 
juvenile court would do. 



86 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



NEIGHBORS NEEDED 

JACOB RIIS 
Executive officer of the Good Government Clubs of New York City 

(The concluding part of an address published in The Sunday 
School Times of October 2, 1909.) 

"GoD,'^ says an old proverb, "employs no hired men. 
His work is done by his sons." That is, in the family. 

Some years ago we established children's courts, with 
probation officers, in our cities to deal sensibly and justly 
with the young, whom heretofore we had herded with 
criminals to their injury and our loss. That was good. 
But the trouble with the children who go astray is that 
the home, the family, have lost their grip upon them 
in the contact with the street and the gutter that are 
far too much in evidence in our cities. Some young men 
in one of the churches of New York, who beUeved that 
all God's children are of one family, undertook to restore 
this lost grip. They saw that the probation officer had 
his hands too full, and formed the Big Brothers' Band. 
Each of them agreed to be a big brother to some child 
gone astray. He became his friend, took him home, 
took him to the ball game, made him welcome, let him 
understand he was there to help him. 

They had no plan to speak of. They made love work 
it out as they went along. They got acquainted with 
his home first of all, with his father and mother. They 
"gave the mother back her boy." If he ought to be in 
school and was not, they saw to that; they took the teacher 
into their counsel. If the boy was old enough, they got 



JACOB RIIS 87 

him a job. They saw to it that there was a gymnasium, 
a club where he could spend his evenings and be safe. 
The hours between supper and bed are often the most 
pregnant in a boy's life. If you know where he is then, 
you have a good grip on him. If the boy didn't attend 
church or Sunday-school, they took him to their own. 
And they never patronized him, for that would have 
spoiled it all. 

Go down to your duty toward your fellowman, and 
you will never reach him, never get there. To be of 
any use, you have got to go over on the level, as from 
neighbor to neighbor, and on that road you will soon 
find yourself going up, in fact, to your neglected oppor- 
tunity, the work you let He too long. In the family 
there is no descending, no patronizing — cannot be. 
Charity doesn't corrupt, in the family, because it is 
natural; it is love, which is the true meaning of charity. 
It is the lesson of the gospel which we are learning 
over again in the neighborly touch from a new angle, — 
more is the pity that we ever let it escape us. The Big 
Brother comes with the message of a friend in the family, 
and the Httle brother takes his hand gladly, and goes 
along his way. 

For the boy would rather be good than bad. Some- 
thing outside of him made him bad, if indeed he was 
bad at all. But the first result of the brotherly plan 
is to substitute for the inquiry, "Why is the boy bad?" 
the much more sensible one, "Is the boy bad ? " It is just 
leaving out a word, but it makes all the difference. The 
answer is a flat denial in nine cases out of ten. Some- 
body else was bad, somebody who took the lad's child- 
hood away, corrupted it with the workshop, the street, 



88 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the tenement, took from him his sweet and wholesome 
ideals, and wondered afterward at the crop of manhood 
that grew in the trail he left. 

It is all part of the new reading of a very old rehgion 
that tells us what every man knows in his heart, that 
we are all brothers because we have one Father, who 
sent his only Son to be our brother and guide to his 
kingdom. It is a new reading only because we forgot 
so long, and now we are learning again. And that is 
the message of our day to the days that are coming. 

"'I showed men God,' my Lord will say, 
*As I traveled along the King's highway. 

I eased the sister's troubled mind; 

I helped the blighted to be resigned; 

I showed the sky to the souls grown blind. 
And what did you ? ' my Lord will say, 
When we meet at the end of the King's highway." 

If we can say truly, "I tried to be a neighbor," all will 
be well with us. 



AMERICA'S FUTURE RULERS 

RUSSELL H. CONWELL 

Lyceum Lecturer, and President of the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia 

(Extract from his lecture, "The Silver Crown," as delivered at 
Chautauqua, New York, July 31, 1909.) 

As the story goes, a certain silver crown, the symbol 
of kingship, was once given to a lowly huntsman of North 
India because, according to a decree of the stars, he 



RUSSELL H. CONWELL 89 

was followed by the animals, served by the sun, obeyed 
by the waters, and loved by mankind. 

I am looking out into this audience to find the kings 
and the queens who will rule America. No nation is 
ruled by so few people as the United States of America. 
There is no place where a boss can attain such power 
as in America. Even in Philadelphia we appreciate the 
boss. We are learning that men and women cannot and 
will not give the time to poUtics when they can better 
give it to something else. If you have a good boss who 
does the best he can, let him keep charge; but if he is 
dishonest, then turn him out and get another. To the 
man who says he is too pious to be active in politics, 
let me say, If you were half as smart as you are pious, 
you would be in the ring. That is where we need good 
men. 

The kings and queens of the future will know what 
to feed the lower orders of life, and I may add, the higher 
orders. There is an awful need of better cooks. The 
universities are interested in the origin of the universe, 
but they had better spend their time in a cooking school. 
How many a man fails in business because his wife is a 
poor cook. How many a college student fails in his 
examinations because he has a poor boarding-house. 
How divinity itself depends upon the absence of dys- 
pepsia and good digestion. In these days our American 
aristocratic ladies think themselves above knowing any- 
thing about cooking. They think their whole duty 
consists in sitting amid the curtains, but they are not 
American ladies, for any fool can sit amid the curtains, 
but it takes a gigantic mind to imderstand the mysteries 
of the laboratory of the kitchen. 



go AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

In America to-day great artists are needed. We have 
many now, but our houses, our schools, and our barns 
should be covered with great pictures, and we need the 
artists to paint them. Will we get them from Paris, or 
Rome? Maybe some day they will come home and do 
as great things as if they had stayed at home. That is 
not true now. The artistic sense is to be developed by 
observation of the world about us. 

And, too, musicians are needed greatly. We have lots 
of noise, but Httle music. I recall the vocal gymnastics 
of a certain high-priced church choir, and if I had stood 
in the pulpit and sworn at the pulpit I would not have 
committed as great a sacrilege as the exhibition up on 
that shelf. Music is such a combination of sounds as 
will move a man to higher thoughts and nobler deeds. 
The great test of music is the listener. 

Again, there are not enough orators in the world, not 
as many as there used to be. Upon my first visit to 
Chautauqua the program included such speakers as John 
B. Gough, Wendell Phillips, and Henry Ward Beecher. 
They have no successors. And yet the newspaper or 
the printed page can never take the place of the personal 
magnetism of the public speaker. Much of the decline 
of oratory is due to the modern schools of elocution 
which have taken over the name of "schools of oratory." 
The two things, oratory and elocution, are not the same, 
though elocutionary training may be of value in the 
preparation of the orator. Elocution is the art of expres- 
sion, and every teacher has his own art; but oratory is 
the great universal science of effective speech. If you 
call a dog and he comes, that is oratory; if he runs away, 
that is elocution. 



ANDREW S. DRAPER 91 



PROGRESSIVE AMERICA 

ANDREW S. DRAPER 
Commissioner of Education of the State of New York 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, New 
York, July 4, 1909.) 

All Americans are optimists. There may be a few 
stopping with us who are not, but they are not Ameri- 
cans. The expectations of the nation are boundless. 
We will fix no upper Hmits. These expectations are 
not gross: they are genuine and sincere, moral and high- 
minded. They are the issue of a mighty world move- 
ment; the splendid product of the best thinking and the 
hardest strugghng for a thousand years. 

Our critics say that we are boastful. We will not put 
them to the trouble of proving it; we admit it. It is 
a matter of definition, of terminology. We have self- 
confidence born of knowledge and of accompHshment. 
We know something of the doctrine of constants. There 
is logic which is as sure as the sim. The nation believes 
in the stars which are in the heavens, and it also beheves 
in the stars which are upon the flag. It knows its his- 
tory, it understands its constituent elements; it has 
definite purposes; it expects to go forward; it beheves 
in itself. 

None will deny now that the real growth of the nation 
must be in soberness, in coherence, in balance, in moder- 
ation, in reserve power, in administrative effectiveness, 
in moral sense, and in respect for law. 

We have no fear of consequences. We rest our future 



92 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

upon the faith that the happiness and the beneficent 
influence of America must rest upon the average of 
enhghtenment, upon the measure of serious and poten- 
tial work, and upon the attendant level of moral char- 
acter, attainable by all the men and women who Hve 
under our flag. 

The corner-stone principle of our pohtical theory coin- 
cides absolutely with the fundamental doctrine of our 
moral law. All men and women are to be intellectually 
quickened and made industrially potential to the very 
Hmits of sane and balanced character. The moral sense 
of the people is determined by it, and the nation's great- 
ness is measured by it. Before this fact the prerogative 
of a monarch or the comfort of a class is of no account. 
Before it every other consideration must give way. It 
is right here that democracies that can hold together 
surpass monarchies. It is for this reason that the pro- 
gressive will of an intelligent people is better than the 
hereditary and arbitrary power of kings. 



THE TORCH OF CIVILIZATION 

THOMAS NELSON PAGE 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the New Eng- 
land Society in the city of Brooklyn, December 21, 1899.) 

In the history of civilization first one nation arises and 
becomes the torch-bearer, and then another takes the 
torch as it becomes stronger, the stronger always pushing 
the weaker aside and becoming in its turn the leader. 



THOMAS NELSON PAGE 93 

Each nation that has borne the torch of civilization has 
followed some path peculiarly its o\\ti. Egyptian, 
Syrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Frank, all had their 
ideal of power — order and progress directed under 
supreme authority, maintained by armed organization. 
We Anglo-Saxons bear the torch of ci\dlization because 
we possess the principles of civil Uberty, and we have 
the character, or should have the character, which our 
fathers have transmitted to us, with which to uphold it. 
If we have not, then be sure that \^ith the certainty of a 
law of nature some nation — it may be one or it may be 
another — already knocking at our doors, vdU. push us 
from the way, and take the torch and bear it onward, 
and we shall go dow^n. 

But I have no fear of the future. I beHeve the great 
Anglo-Saxon race contains elements which alone can 
continue to be the leaders of ci\iLization, the elements of 
fundamental power, abiding virtue, pubHc and private. 
Wealth will not preserve a state; it must be the aggrega- 
tion of indi\idual integrity in its members, in its citizens, 
that shall preserve it. That integrity, I beheve, exists, 
deep-rooted among our people. Sometimes when I read 
accounts of vice here and there eatuig into the heart of 
the people, I feel inclined to be pessimistic; but when I 
come face to face "v\4th the American and see him in his 
Hfe, as he truly is; when I reflect on the great body of 
our people that stretch from one side of this country to 
the other, their homes perched on every hill and nestled 
ia every valley, and recognize the sterling virtue and the 
kind of character that sustains it, bmlt on the rock of 
those principles that our fathers transmitted to us, my 
pessimism disappears and I know that not only for this 



94 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

immediate time, but for many long generations to come, 
with that reservoir of virtue to draw from, we shall 
sustain and carry both ourselves and the whole human 
race forward. 



FAITH IN MANKIND 

ARTHUR T. HADLEY 

President of Yale University 

(The concluding part of a baccalaureate address to the graduating 
class of Yale University, June 27, 1909.) 

In order to accompHsh anything great, a man must 
have two sides to his greatness: a personal side and a 
social side. He must be upright himself, and he must 
beHeve in the good intentions and possibiHties of others 
about him. 

The scholars and scientific men of the country have 
sometimes been reproached with a certain indifference 
to the feelings and sentiments of their fellowmen. It 
has been said that their critical faculty is developed 
more strongly than their constructive instinct; that their 
brain has been nourished at the expense of their heart; 
that what they have gained in breadth of vision has 
been outweighed by a loss of human sympathy. 

It is for you to prove the falseness of this charge. It is 
for you to show by your Hfe and your utterances that 
you believe in the men who are working with you and 
about you. There will probably be times when this is 
a hard task. If you have studied history or Uterature 



ARTHUR J. HADLEY 95 

or science aright, some things which look large to other 
people will look small to you. You will frequently be 
called upon to give the unwelcome advice that a desired 
end cannot be reached by a short cut; and this may 
cause some of your enthusiastic friends to lose confidence 
in your leadership. There are always times when a man 
who is clear-headed is reproached with being hard-hearted. 
But if you yourselves keep your faith in your fellowmen, 
these things, though they be momentary hindrances, will in 
the long run make for your power of Christian leadership. 

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the people 
distrusted the guidance of scientific men in things material. 
They believed that they could do their business best 
without the advice of the theorists. When it came to 
the conduct of business scientific men and practical men 
eyed each other with mutual distrust. As long as the 
scientific men remained mere critics this distrust remained. 
When they came to take up the practical problems of 
appHed mechanics and physics and solve them positively in 
a large way, they became the trusted leaders of modern 
material development. 

It is for you to deal with the profounder problems of 
human Hfe in the same way. It is for you to prove your 
right to take the lead in the poHtical and social and 
spiritual development of the country, as well as in its 
mechanical and material development. To do this you 
must take hold of these social problems with the same 
positive faith with which your fathers took hold of the 
problems of applied science. To the man who beheves 
in his fellowmen, who has faith in his country, and in 
whom the love of the God whom he hath not seen is 
but an outgrowth of a love for his fellowmen whom he 



96 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

hath seen, the opening years of the twentieth century 
are years of unrivaled promise. We already know that 
a man can learn to love God by loving his fellowmen. 
Equally true we shall find it that a man learns to believe 
in God by believing in his fellowmen. 



OUR DUTY TO THE ENGLISH TONGUE 

JOHN H. FINLEY 

President of the College of the City of New York 

(Extract from an address to the graduating class of the College 
of the City of New York, January 30, 19 10.) 

I AM going to speak of something which you may 
think to be neither vital nor particularly appropriate, 
but which, as I see it, has in it elements of all your other 
obligations to the city, the nation, your fellowmen, of 
patriotism, altruism, and rehgion. I shall disappoint 
you when I tell you that I am thinking of your duty to 
the Enghsh tongue, the tongue which was mother to the 
first language of some of you and which has been the 
patient foster mother to others. 

When an ancient writer, trying to express the revela- 
tion of his God to him, said that it was "the word become 
flesh," it was no careless figure of speech that he used. 
You have lived a good part of these fifteen years in the 
places where the word, the spirit of others, teachers, 
parents, the whole past, has been becoming the man in 
you. And I hope this will not cease so long as you have 
flesh in which the spirit can reveal itself. 



JOHN H. FINLEY 97 

If this be true, how important becomes the word — 
that expression of yourselves in which your flesh becomes 
spirit and wanders free of you to work good or ill in the 
earth among men. And by its importance am I justified 
in asking your special pledge of devotion, as I speak 
for the last time to you as a class before you go up for 
your degrees, your devotion to the beauty, the purity, 
the integrity, the vitaHty of the tongue in which all 
your knowledges are latent, without which thought itself 
is impotent — to the protection of this tongue from the 
sloven, the ignorant, the vicious; to its ennobling among 
the arts. 

I would have you go out lovers of your speech. This 
is a time of philanthropists, but we do not need their 
riches to add to our common vocabulary. It is richer 
than that of many, of most, tongues, though we are most 
of us seemingly content with a very meager possession. 
But we do need philologists, in the original meaning of 
that word, men in every walk of life who will use speech 
conscientiously, discriminatingly, intelligently, yet with- 
out pedantry or show. 

The papers tell of the mayor's praise of college men 
in cleaning the streets, and all college men should be 
proud of that service given by one of their number. I 
hope that graduates of this college will come to serve the 
city in its every department. That is our peculiar oppor- 
tunity and obHgation as I see it; but incidentally you 
can constitute yourselves a speech-cleaning department, 
and begin by keeping clean and improving the speech 
before your own doors in the midst of the babel of voices 
about you. 

To have free speech! That has come after long years 



qS AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

of struggle. What we want now is clear speech, speech 
restrained to truth, speech expanded to truth. Democ- 
racy needs philologists who can teach her children, who 
can write her laws for her, who can compose an amend- 
ment to the Constitution which needs not to be inter- 
preted, who can discover to others in plain, unambiguous 
EngHsh the good from the evil which they themselves 
have discerned. And here, as in no other place, is such 
speech needed, for here is pecuHarly the place of the 
decision of things, and they have ultimately to be decided 
in the flesh that has become word. 



THE PROTECTION OF AMERICAN CITIZENS 

WILLIAM P. FRYE 

United States Senator from Maine 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the Michigan 
Club, Detroit, Michigan, February 21, 1890.) 

Citizenship! What is citizenship? It has a broader 
signification than you or I are apt to give it. Citizenship 
does not mean alone that the man who possesses it shall 
be obedient to the law, shall be kindly to his neighbors, 
shall regard the rights of others, shall perform his duties 
as juror, shall, if the hour of peril comes, yield his time, 
his property, and his life to his country. It means more 
than that. It means that his country shall guarantee 
to him and protect him in every right which the Consti- 
tution gives him. What right has the republic to demand 



WILLIAM P. FRYE 99 

his life, his property, in the hour of peril, if, when his 
hour of peril comes, it fails him? 

A few years ago King Theodore, of Abyssinia, seized 
Captain Campbell, a British citizen, and incarcerated 
him in a dungeon on the top of a mountain nine thousand 
feet high. England demanded his release, and King 
Theodore refused. England fitted out and sent on five 
thousand English soldiers, ten thousand Sepoys, debarked 
them on the coast, marched them nine hundred miles 
through swamp and morass under a burning sun. Then 
they marched up the mountain height, they scaled the 
walls, they broke down the iron gates, they reached 
down into the dungeon, they took that one British citizen 
hke a brand from the burning, and carried him down the 
moimtain side, across the morass, put him on board the 
white-winged ship, and bore him away to England in 
safety. 

Now, a country that has an eye sharp enough to see 
way across the ocean, way across the morass, way up 
into the mountain top, way down into the dungeon, one 
citizen, one of her thirty millions, and then has an arm 
strong enough to reach across the ocean, way across the 
morass, way up the mountain height and down into the 
dungeon, and take that one and bear him away home in 
safety — who would not live and die, too, for the country 
that can do that? 

I tell you, my friends, this country of ours is worth 
our thought, our care, our labor, our lives. What a 
magnificent country it is ! What a republic for the people, 
where all are kings! Men of great wealth, great power, 
great influence can five without any difficulty in a mon- 
archy; but how can you and I, how can the average man, 



100 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

live under despotic power? Oh, this blessed repubHc of 
ours stretches its hand down to the men and lifts them 
up, while despotism puts its heavy hand on their heads 
and presses them down. This blessed republic of ours 
speaks to every boy in the land, black or white, rich or 
poor, and asks him to come up higher and higher. You 
remember that boy out here on the prairie, the son of a 
widowed mother, poor, neglected perhaps by all except 
the dear old mother. But the republic did not neglect 
him. The republic said to that boy, "Boy, there is a 
ladder, its foot is on the earth, its top is in the sky. Boy, 
go up." And the boy mounted that ladder rimg by 
rung; by the rung of the free schools, by the nmg of the 
academy, by the rung of the college, by the rung of 
splendid service in the United States army, by the rung 
of the United States House of Representatives, by the 
rung of the United States Senate, by the rung of the 
presidency of the great republic, by the rung of a patient 
sickness and a heroic death, until James A. Garfield 
stood side by side with Washington. 

Now, is not a republic Uke that worth the tribute of 
our conscience? Is it not entitled to our best thought, 
to our holiest purpose ? But this is not all. The repub- 
lic does not perform its full duty unless every citizen is 
protected, whether he be on domestic or on foreign soil, 
in all the rights which the Constitution of the United 
States bestows upon him. 



GEORGE W. ATKINSON lOl 



FREEMASONRY 



GEORGE W. ATKINSON 



Former Governor of West Virginia; now of the United States 
Court of Claims 

(Extract from an address at the unveiling and dedicating of the 
Battle Moniunent, at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, October 9, 
1909.) 

The earliest traces of Freemasonry are to be found, 
not in Judea, but in Phoenicia, especially, in the old city 
of Tyre, which stood at the eastern extremity of the Medi- 
terranean Sea. The inhabitants of that city were the 
commercial people of a remote antiquity, and the begin- 
nings of their navigation lie beyond human history. 
They controlled Mediterranean commerce, and were the 
distributers to the then known world of the productions 
and wares of Egypt and Babylon. To aid in this com- 
merce, or rather to protect it, the greatest monument of 
antiquity was reared on the coast at Tyre, known as 
the Watch-Tower of the Mediterranean. It was erected 
about 1200 B.C., or two hundred years before the building 
of Solomon's temple. The builders of this monument 
were the Gibelites, inhabitants of the Phoenician town 
of Byblus, a seaport older than Tyre, who because of 
their occupation — that of operative masonry — were 
known as "stone squarers." Long centuries ago that 
monument toppled and fell, and its ruins, now partially 
buried in the sand, are silent witnesses of the architec- 
ture of operative masonry in the distant past. There, 
at this time, fishermen are spreading their nets on the 



I02 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

desolate rocks, and the bright waves of the Mediterranean 
are rolHng over the ancient granite columns. To lay 
the foundation of this monument required the use of a 
level; to square the stone that of the square; and to 
round the columns that of the compasses. Thus it was 
that operative masons erected a mommient before they 
built a temple. Those stupendous works, which excited 
the wonder of the ancient world and formed an epoch 
in the history of mankind, have ages since moldered into 
dust; but this moral edifice, joining the vigor of youth 
to the maturity of age, has outHved their glory, and 
now mourns over the ruins of their fall. 

The true Mason in the erection of his own temple 
builds for a brighter and a better world than this. He 
heeds the power that builded worlds and carpeted crea- 
tion's temple with flowers and stars; that same power 
that chains the Kghtning to its chariot-wheels and rides 
peacefully upon the storms, that same power which tells 
us that if a man dies he shall surely Hve again. Such 
power the Freemason recognizes, and so he builds for 
another and a better clime. He knows that the day will 
sometime come when earth's grandest temples will 
crumble and fall; when the great globe itself will melt 
with fervent heat; when the sim will drag along the jar- 
ring heavens and refuse to shine; when the hght of the 
stars will pale away; when the moon will roll up the 
rending sky and hang her latent hvery on the wings of 
the dying night; when a mighty angel will stand with 
one foot upon the sea and the other on the land and will 
proclaim that time itself shall be no more. When all 
this shall come, as come it will, the deeds and work of 
the true Mason, if he have builded wisely and well, will 



ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE 103 

remain indestructible, immutable, immortal, panoplied 
in perpetual glory, unaged by centuries, unmarred by 
change, and as eternal as God. 



INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 

ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE 

United States Senator from Wisconsin 

(Extract from a speech on the Payne- Aldrich tariff bill, delivered 
in the Senate of the United States June 2, 1909.) 

It is the duty of every man here to employ every 
means possible to forestall the time when the combina- 
tions of this coimtry shall be strong enough to say to the 
combinations of other countries, "We are able to hand 
you over, without entering upon the field of competition, 
the whole American market." I want to let the foreign 
producer into this country at such a level of duty as 
will allow his productions to sell in the market here as 
something of a check upon excessive prices imposed 
upon the American people by the combinations formed 
to destroy home competition. That is my position. 

Mr. President, the American people ^ill never surrender 
their industrial Uberty. We will go back to the system 
of competition if need be in order to prevent it, even 
though it is less economical. I do not say that is neces- 
sary, but I do say that the people who won independence 
for this country and who preserved this Government 
will never permit their markets to be controlled by any 
combination of men who can dictate prices for raw mate- 



I04 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

rials and prices for finished products and prices for human 
labor. 

We talk about a free country. Brave men went out 
in '6 1 to keep undivided upon the map of America these 
United States and to write on the escutcheon of this 
country, ''There shall be no bondmen under the flag." 
What did they mean by that ? Do you think they meant 
just taking the shackles off the hands ? Is that freedom ? 
No, it is not. Freedom, true freedom, as expressed in 
the Declaration of Independence — equaUty for all men 
— means not only free hands, not only physical freedom; 
it means, sir, industrial and commercial freedom, equahty 
of opportunity, and a fair chance for every man. And 
you are building up a system here that will destroy the 
progress of our country, the development of the Ameri- 
can race. Competition may be wasteful, but under the 
stimulus of competition we have made wonderful prog- 
ress. We have outstripped all the nations of the earth. 
There are some things to be considered in the hfe of a 
nation besides cheapness. In this system of monopoly 
which is being developed, the individual opportimity of 
which we are so proud is denied the boy who is poor 
and without influence. 

But with all this phenomenal growth and reduced cost 
of production, because of the uncontrolled mastery of 
the markets by combinations, the consumer has been 
denied any share in cheapened production; and there is 
no difference in principle between compelHng a man to 
work without wages and compelHng him to pay a cer- 
tain price for what he buys, when these prices are not 
fixed by the arbitrary decision of those who arbitrarily 
control the market. 



ANDREW CARNEGIE 105 



ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS IN BUSINESS 

ANDREW CARNEGIE 

(Extract from an address to young men, delivered at a social 
gathering of the Bible Class conducted by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 
at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, New York city.) 

I CALL your attention to several important things which 
are necessary quahfications for the successful young man. 
He must be honest, and he must be moral, and he must 
be sober. 

When the time comes for one to take a young man into 
partnership, what ranks first? I'll tell you. He thinks 
of your character. You have got to be as straight as a 
die, incapable of doing wrong, honorable, straightforward, 
and loyal. His first consideration is your moral charac- 
ter. Your habits, of course, must be correct. He wants 
integrity above everything. The man who drinks hquor, 
he will not do. It is impossible to ever trust that man 
again, who even once or twice drinks to excess. You 
can never trust a man in business who allows his brain 
to become muddled. Of course, you would never enter 
a bar-room — that is too low. The tramp's rule is, 
"Never work between meals." Let yours be, "Never 
drink between meals." 

Now, there are three classes of men in the world as I 
see it. 

First, the man who starts out with wealth as his aim. 
Why should we aim at that ? Except for this one reason 
— that it may enable you to do so much for others. 

Second, the young man who starts out with the desire 
for fame. 



I06 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Third, a class depicted by a great poet who died too. 

young, Alexander Smith, a famous Scot. Here is his resolve : 

"I will go forth among men 
Armored in a pure intent, 
Great things can be done: 
But whether I stand or crownless fall, 
It matters not so God's work be done. 
Label the ocean on its many sands, 
Write verses in its praise, 
The immoved sea erases both alike. 
But man, vain man, unless his fellows can 
Behold his deeds he cares not to be great: 
But has learned to love the deed — the hghtning deed, 
Nor heeds the thunder following after. 
Which men call fame." 

That is the idea I would place before every young man. 

By the way, here is a story which Mr. Blaine told me, 
and which did me a great deal of good. We were talking 
about General Garfield. Mr. Blaine said: *' Garfield and 
I traveled through Europe together. One day we were 
talking about young men, what was their great preserva- 
tive from evil ways, and Garfield said: 'Well, this thought 
has been my best help. I found out that I had to Hve 
with Jim Garfield, and that Jim was sure to know every- 
thing that I did or thought, and I didn't want to Hve 
with a mean, low, common, vulgar, coarse fellow. I 
wished to live with a gentleman.'" 

"What is a gentleman? Say, is it birth 
Makes a man noble, or adds to his worth? 
Is there a family tree to be had 
Shady enough to conceal what is bad? 
Seek out the man who has God for his guide. 
Nothing to blush for, and nothing to hide ; 
Be he a noble, or be he in trade, 
This is the gentieman Nature has made." 



CHARLES J. BONAPARTE 107 

Now, if you will carry out this one precept in your 
mind you cannot go wrong. You need not be thinking 
nor seeking other people's respect or applause. You have 
only one question to ask yourself when you he down at 
night. ''Do you retain your own self-respect?" If you 
really do, don't be troubUng yourselves about what 
anybody else thinks about you, you are all right. Shake- 
speare has it, as usual, just to the point. This is your 
great rule, follow it, and all is well: 

"To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'* 



THE MINUTEMAN OF THE AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE 

Of the Baltimore, Maryland, Bar; former Attorney-General of the 

United States 

(The concluding part of an oration delivered on the one hundred 
and twenty-fifth anniversary of Concord fight, April 19, 1900.) 

In the admirable Concord oration of Mr. Curtis, that 
oration which, for those who heard it, must surely make 
another seem as the reverse side of a tapestry, there is 
mentioned a young minuteman of twenty-two, who, 
after serving with conspicuous gallantry during the 
entire day, was mortally wounded just before its close. 
He sent a message to the girl he loved, a short and very 
simple message, which yet deserves a thought. ''Tell 



io8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

her," said the dying boy to his father, "tell her that I 
am glad I turned out this morning." May we rightly 
share his gladness when he felt his allotted task was 
done and well done, his free offering was forever accepted? 
In this day of Hague conferences and arbitration treaties 
may we, we who stand on the threshold of the twentieth 
century, we who hear many words about the barbarism 
of warfare, may we find cause to rejoice when we picture 
that shadowed home, when we see the tears fall on that 
young grave, when we remember that as he fell, so fell 
many thousands, as mourned those who loved him so 
mourned a whole people for seven long, weary, bloody 
years? Yes, we may, we should; such memories are 
our truly priceless treasure, more precious a thousand- 
fold than wealth and comfort, than knowledge and mate- 
rial progress, than art and refinement of manners. All 
these things are good, but all of them have been denied 
to nations which the world could have ill spared; that 
which is truly vital, that which, if wanting, can be replaced 
by no vanity of riches and no pride of learning, no grandeur 
and no beauty is — men; a national existence which lacks 
these 

"Is but as ivy leaves around the ruined turret wreath, 
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath : " 

a Uving crust on a dead core. 

If then, brethren, you see too often in our pubHc life 
but a swinish scuffle for sordid, selfish gain, you find 
among our pubhc men figures for the slow, unmoving 
finger of scorn to point at, there are wafted to you with 
voices of public opinion breaths of foulness and maUce 
and lies, you are sickened by the greed, the vulgar vanity, 
the cant, the falsehood, the grossness which degrade and 



HENRY N. SNYDER 109 

poison our national being, I bid you look to the minute- 
man! He is the real American; he is our true fellow 
countryman ; he Hves in the nation's hfe and, while he 
so lives, while we can yet claim kinship with him and 
not blush for our own unworthiness, then, under God's 
providence, America will Uve as a nation, and Uve in 
freedom and honor among men! 



KING'S MOUNTAIN — ITS MEANING AND 

MESSAGE 

HENRY N. SNYDER 
President of Woford College 

(Extract from an address at King's Mountain, South Carolina, 
October 7, 1909.) 

Early in September, 1780, Colonel Ferguson, one of 
the Tory commanders of the British forces in the South, 
sent a message to the mountain chieftains of the Watauga, 
the Nolachucky, and the Holston, that if they did *'not 
desist from their opposition to British arms, he would 
march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, 
and lay waste their country with fire and sword." Wrongly 
he reckoned in the real effect of such a message. It came 
as a challenge to men Httle accustomed to let a challenge 
pass without taking it up. 

On the twenty-fifth of September, 1780, at the call of 
their leaders, the mountain men met at Sycamore Shoals 
on the Watauga. It is a fateful and significant gather- 
ing. The destiny of a future repubHc is involved in it. 



no AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Campbell is there with his four hundred Virginians, 
Shelby has brought two hundred and forty of his Holston 
men to join them to an equal number from the banks of 
the Watauga under Sevier. Looking back upon them 
from this distance of time, one must say that it is a 
romantically picturesque company of men. Clad in the 
familiar fringed hunting shirt of the frontiersman, their 
long hair flowing from beneath coonskin or minkskin 
caps, their feet shod in the moccasin of the Indian foes, 
in their belt the knife and tomahawk, and in their hands, 
ever ready, reaching from foot to chin, the long, deadly 
rifle, they step before our modern eyes as singularly 
romantic and picturesque figures. They are our knight- 
errants of the wilderness — ''the advance guard of west- 
ern civiUzation and the rearguard of the Revolution"; 
tall, grim, gaunt, keen-eyed, toil-hardened men, with 
nerves of steel and muscles of iron, rude of speech, rough 
of manner, and stern of deed, their struggles to subdue 
the wilderness and their contests with the Indians had 
made them resourceful, self-reliant, independent, brave. 

"To catch and destroy Ferguson " had been the cry 
of the mountaineers. Now they were ready to make it 
good; and the sun of October 7, 1780, went down on the 
last of Ferguson and his men — all slain or captured. 

But they had done far more than destroy Ferguson. 
Their victory sent Cornwallis from Charlotte back to 
Winnsboro all but panic-stricken, freed the up-country 
of the horror and oppression of Tory rule, brought a new 
hope and courage and faith to the patriotic cause every- 
where, and became the turning point of the Revolution, 
making Yorktown's glad day a near possibihty. 

Men of the up-country of the two Carolinas and of 



HENRY N. SNYDER III 

Georgia of that elder day! You have the reward of all 
your sufferings and hardships on this slope on that day 
of battle. To-day we turn back to you in gratitude for 
the priceless legacy you left us, your descendants. Fit- 
ting it is, therefore, that we, your heirs, should dedicate 
to your memory this lofty shaft. Its base rests upon 
the hill consecrated to your valor and your devotion to 
the cause which now blesses us, and you were men of the 
hills; it is made of enduring granite, dug from the very 
earth over which you marched and suffered, and you 
were unyielding granite in the stubborn virtues of your 
manhood; it points the way to the blue of the overarch- 
ing sky from its deep base in the broad bosom of the 
earth, and out of your heroic virtues, born out of the 
soil that you won, there soared high over all the aspiring 
ideals of home, of brotherhood, of the same rights for 
all and special privileges to none, of religious and political 
liberty, in a republic of free and equal men. 

It was for these ideals that you fought and were will- 
ing to die. That granite fiber of your manhood, that 
grim, stern battle lust, those muscles of iron and nerves 
of steel — all were but the servants of your ideals. These 
chiefly constitute your glory. You did your whole duty 
in striving to make them real in your own way and by 
your own means, and we of to-day honor you most when 
we turn from this scene and these exercises and this 
shaft dedicated to your memory, possessed with the 
thought that it shall be our duty to meet the new tasks, 
social, industrial, and political, that have come to us, 
in the spirit of the ideals which, through your deeds here 
performed, make this spot a shrine of patriotic worship 
for all Americans. 



112 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



A PLEA FOR AMERICAN DRAMA 

PERCY MACKAYE 
Dramatist, author, and lecturer, of Cornish, New Hampshire 

(Extract from an address on "The Dramatist as Citizen," deliv- 
ered in February, 1909, at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Brown 
Universities, and elsewhere.) 

Sixteen years after our forefathers landed on the 
barren shores of Massachusetts Bay they brought their 
bushels of wheat, by assessment, to Cambridge, for the 
endowment of Harvard College. They realized that 
Learning could not stand on its own legs without a full 
stomach. They did not require their ministers to com- 
pete in the market of commerce. There they were wise; 
and we inherit that wisdom. Yet they were not suffi- 
ciently wise. They brought no wheat for the sustenance 
of art, as once the people of France brought their all, 
and dragged their very hearthstones, to upbuild the 
groins and sculptures of their cathedrals. The Puritans 
still thought it well for one-half of man's nature to starve. 
There they were foolish; and we, in large measure, inherit 
that folly. How much longer must the sins of the fathers 
be upon us? 

The drama is splendidly capable of reconciling the 
best ideals of the Puritan, the Greek, and the cathedral 
builder; of blending in one lay religion the service of the 
state and the service of God. The drama, I say, is 
capable of doing this, in a theater free to do so; but the 
drama is not able to do this in a theater compelled to 
do otherwise. Let us then seek to reverse the old adage, 



PERCY MACKAYE 113 

and henceforth let the "nobody's business" of freeing 
the theater from commercial bondage be "everybody's 
business" who loves the drama and his country. 

Those who will gainsay such a purpose — and they 
will be many and sincere — are chiefly those who do 
not beheve that the drama, the dramatist's profession, 
holds any such lofty possibihties in its nature. To those 
I reply. The possibihties of the drama are Hmited only 
by the possibihties of man. Search history, search the 
heart of man, and you will find both precedent and 
prophecy for the ideal of the drama as the ritual of a 
lay religion; for the ideal of the theater as a civic temple 
of the people. 

Some day there may arise amongst us a supreme 
critic of American po ten tiah ties — a George Brandes and 
James Bryce in one — who shall detect and marshal the 
co-essentials of art and citizenship with such lucid sim- 
plicity that we shall pause aghast to behold ourselves for 
the blundering barbarians we are. 

Such a critic, with wisdom and hiunor and quiet truth, 
will remorselessly convince us that pubhc opinion is 
devoid of common sense or of conscience if it shall con- 
tinue to ignore the responsibihties and the rights of the 
artist as citizen. 



N 



114 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

NEWTON C. BLANCHARD 
Former Governor of Louisiana 

(Extract from an address delivered on the occasion of "Louisiana 
Day," September 14, 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 
St. Louis, Missouri.) 

The century's progress has been marked by paths of 
development that constitute an eloquent tribute to 
American genius. The raising of the Stars and Stripes 
at New Orleans in December, 1803, was something more 
than a mere transference of sovereignty. It was the 
birth of a new epoch of civilization. 

Countless evidences of the marvelous changes from 
then to now are visible everywhere in the Louisiana 
Purchase territory. One is here at hand. We stand, 
ladies and gentlemen, in sight of the spot where in 1764 
Choteau and Laclede threw up a few rude huts and called 
the place St. Louis. Wliat a transformation since that 
day! The trading-post has become a magnificent metrop- 
olis, the fourth in point of population in the United States, 
and the first in importance in many lines of commercial 
activity. 

And down with us, where the great river enters upon 
its last reach before mingling its waters with the waves 
of the sun-kissed Gulf, we have her sister. New Orleans, 
of queenly grace, the early capital of the Louisiana terri- 
tory, the gHttering gem of the alluvial valley of the river, 
of rapidly augmenting commercial importance, now 
second only to New York as a port, whose coming glory 



NEWTON C. BLANCHARD I15 

as one of the greatest cities of America may be easily 
discerned by him gifted with the power to forecast the 
early future. 

Time is the book of Hfe upon the leaves of which 
the world writes its record. Nations come and go; 
generation after generation turns the pages upon which 
without reserve the world's history is chronicled. We 
must not think it is all of man's doings. In the 
fulness of time events ripen and consummation follows. 
Man is merely the instrument used by the great 
Directing Power. 

It was the design of Providence that the discovery and 
settlement of this country by France was made, to be 
afterward transferred to the authority of Spain; and it 
was of the design of Providence that this province of 
Louisiana, extending from the Mississippi well nigh to 
the Pacific Ocean, should pass under the strong juris- 
diction of the United States. 

The purchase price of real estate transactions between 
nations has usually been human blood and human Hfe. 
Not so with the Louisiana acquisition. It was money 
only that it cost us. Fifteen millions in round numbers, 
and for what is now twelve states and two territories. 
Viewed from a business standpoint, it was the greatest 
real estate transaction on record in the world's history. 
Uncle Sam proved himself early a great trader, and has 
kept it up ever since, until now his capacity for barter 
and trade and large business affairs and commercial 
ventures is at once the wonder, the admiration, and the 
envy of the world. 

Those who took part in the great transaction — wise 
as they were — fell far short of realizing the supreme 



Ii6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

importance of the step to the United States. The master 
mind of Napoleon came nearer it. He seems to have 
comprehended in a large degree its effect on the history 
of the world, and foresaw, as the result of the acquisi- 
tion, the coming glory, greatness, and power of the 
United States. 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE SKY-LINE 

WALTER WILLIAMS 
Dean of the School of Journalism, University of Missouri 

(Extract from a lecture with above title.) 

The other evening I saw the setting sun in a great 
city. From the dome of a tall building I watched the 
disappearance of the day's light. The city lay like a 
picture unrolled upon a lawn. The darkness came. 
First the shadows swept the riverside where squalor 
lay. Then they cHmbed apace and the tenement-houses, 
thronged with vice and poverty and crime, were blotted 
out from view. Farther the shadows moved and the 
huge warerooms, the marts of trade and commerce, 
dropped one by one into the night's obUvion. A moment 
more and the residences of the citizens, the homes — 
the httle spots of heaven on earth, for which the first 
mother brought the architectural plans from Paradise, 
from which half the world goes forth at morning time 
to return at even-song and feel the dearest welcome, the 
welcome of a loving woman's outstretched arms — these 
too faded into twilight and vanished all. Had the city 



WALTER WILLIAMS I17 

and its people, its teeming millions and its tragic strife 
disappeared into the night? I looked again. Far on a 
distant eminence, mmoticed and obscure amid the garish 
day, stood a Uttle church of imhewn rocks. Upon its 
roof some reverent hand had placed a golden cross, 
symbol in all ages of self-sacrifice and loving service. 
The city had melted away, as by a magic wand. The 
last rays of the westering sun touched the cross with a 
good-night kiss, and it alone of all the city's magnificence 
and desolation, its sorrow and its hope, stood out in 
view. To follow this cross by day, to follow it when the 
darkness deepens and naught else remains, I summon 
you. Its central heart is love, its outstretched arms, 
self-sacrifice and service. It is no easy task, no rose- 
water campaign, to which I summon you. It means 
hardships and toil, the scars and seams of sorrow, Geth- 
semane, Golgotha, but, please God, glory just beyond. 

Set up the cross in the sky-fine of the world, amid its 
smoking chimneys, its teeming enginery, its mighty and 
new problems, and the kingdom of Heaven, for which we 
pray in word or thought or deed, has come on earth. 



MORAL VISION 

JOHN A. RICE 
Pastor of the Rayne Memorial M. E. Church, South, of New Orleans 

(Extract from a baccalaureate sermon at the Commencement 
Exercises of Tulane University, 1909.) 

RusKiN has somewhere said that for every thousand 
that can talk there is but one that can think, and for 



Ii8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

every thousand that can think there is but one that 
can see. 

Moral perspective implies seeing not only on the near 
side of far things, but also the far side of near things. 
Life is not a straight line by which we can move away 
forever from the things of to-day, but a circle which 
brings us back to-morrow to where we stand to-day. 
We often think of what may happen when we go into 
eternity. The truth is we are in eternity now. We 
shall never be any nearer to God than we are this morn- 
ing, any more under the sway of the laws of eternal 
Ufe. Disturbing causes set to work now will bring effects 
in disaster sooner or later. Many a wretched soul has 
spent long, weary years in a futile effort to redeem one 
fatal hour. Near cuts and unfaithful dealing with one's 
self, and with the most trivial responsibility, bring us 
out where we started, often bleeding at every pore. The 
fatal hour that in the merciless march of the years brings 
upon us the crack of doom may seem at the time to be 
without significance. Phillips Brooks was once asked 
what was the greatest thought he had ever had, and, 
after a moment's reflection, rephed, "The greatness of 
the small, the divinity of the commonplace." The uni- 
verse, said Emerson, is represented in each of its parts. 
Any of us can discern the face of the sky, but only the 
true prophet can tell the signs of the times. And this 
is the mission of the college men and women of to-day. 
They must be eyes for those who are blind. For the 
things of to-day in individual and social Hfe are but 
bubbles coming up out of abysmal deeps and measureless 
areas far below the surface and far beyond the grasp 
and the reach of the multitude. It is given only to the 



It 



JOHN A. RICE 119 



prophet to see the cloud not larger than a man's hand 
and point out the coming storm. We may be sure that 
only the true and the right have any chance. "Truth 
is like a foot-ball; you may kick it about all day, but 
when night comes it will stand out round and smooth, 
with not a scar to tell that it has been hit." It is, there- 
fore, of vital interest that we have eyes for relative values. 
Some things that to-day seem worth dying for to-morrow 
are not worth thinking about, while some things that 
to-day seem not worth thinking about to-morrow are 
worth dying for. It is httle less than tragedy when we 
rig up a derrick to lift up a pebble, and depend upon a 
handspike to move a mountain. There is no more vital 
element of success than perspective, and there is no 
greater need for us all than to have some good angel 
always near to tell us when our "far- traveling hearts" 
are at the parting of the ways. 

This vision of the invisible in right perspective comes 
only to those who are prepared for it. There are distinct 
levels of Uving, and we cannot see higher than we Uve. 
The levels of our Hves are the levels of our vision. And 
we cannot hve higher than our capacities and powers 
have been trained to range. Turner was once showing 
one of his gorgeous pictures to a superficial woman when 
she said to him, "I don't see all that in nature." His 
reply was, "Don't you wish you could?" To Words- 
worth's man 

"A primrose on the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more," 

When Marconi sent his first wireless message to a ship 
in mid-ocean, there were thousands of ships afloat, but 



I20 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

only the one attuned to the home land caught the mes- 
sage. There is a sense in which all vision is a projection 
of self, a Hberating of energies pent up within. 

"Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate'er you may believe. 
There is an inmost center in us all, 
Where truth abides in fulness; and aroimd, 
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
This perfect, clear perception — which is truth, 
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
Binds it, and makes all error ; and to know 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without." 



THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 

HENRY WATTERSON 
Editor of the Louisville " Courier- Journal'* 

(From an address at the dedication of the monument over the 
grave of the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Frederick, 
Maryland, August g, 1898.) 

It was during the darkest days of our second war of 
independence. An English army had invaded and occu- 
pied the seat of the national Government and had burned 
the Capitol of the nation. An EngHsh squadron was 
in undisputed possession of the Chesapeake Bay. The 
British were massing their land and naval forces for 
other conquests, and, as their ships sailed down the 



HENRY WATTERSON 12 1 

Potomac, Dr. William Beanes, a prominent citizen of 
Maryland, who had been arrested at his home in Upper 
Marlboro charged with some offense, real or fancied, 
was carried off a prisoner. 

It was to secure the Hberation of this gentleman, his 
neighbor and friend, that Francis Scott Key obtained 
leave of the President to go to the British admiral mider 
a flag of truce. They proceeded down the bay from 
Baltimore and found the British fleet at the mouth of 
the Potomac. 

It was finaUy agreed that Dr. Beanes should be released; 
but, as an advance upon Baltimore was about to be made, 
it was required that the party of Americans should remain 
under guard on board their own vessel untfl these opera- 
tions were concluded. Thus it was that the night of the 
fourteenth of September, 1814, Key witnessed the bom- 
bardment of Fort McHenry, which his song was to render ' 
illustrious. 

He did not quit the deck the long night through. With 
his single companion, an American flag officer, they 
watched every shell from the moment it was fired until 
it fell. The firing suddenly ceased some time before 
day; and, as they had no communication with any of 
the enemy's ships, they did not know whether the fort 
had surrendered, or the attack upon it had been aban- 
doned. As soon as day dawned, and before it was Hght 
enough to see objects at a distance, their glasses were 
turned to the fort, uncertain whether they should see 
there the Stars and Stripes or the flag of the enemy. 
Blessed vigil! that its prayers were not in vain; glorious 
vigil! that it gave us the " Star-Spangled Banner!" 

During the night the conception of the poem began to 



122 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

form itself in Key's mind. With the early glow of the 
morning, when the long agony of suspense had been 
turned into the rapture of exultation, his feeling found 
expression in completed lines of verse, which he wrote 
upon the back of a letter he happened to have in his 
possession. He finished the piece on the boat that car- 
ried him ashore and wrote out a clear copy that same 
evening at his hotel in Baltimore. Next day it appeared 
in the Baltimore American. Within an hour after, it 
was circulating all over the city, hailed with dehght by 
the excited people. Published in the succeeding issue of 
the American, and elsewhere reprinted, it went straight 
to the popular heart. It was quickly seized for musical 
adaptation. Wherever it was heard its effect was elec- 
trical, and thenceforward it was universally accepted as 
the national anthem. 

The poem tells its own story, and never a truer, for 
every word comes direct from a great heroic soul, powder- 
stained and dipped, as it were, in sacred blood. 

"O, say, can you see by the dawn's early light 

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, 
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ? " 

The two that walked the deck of the cartel boat had 
waited long. They had counted the hours as they 
watched the course of the battle. But a deeper anxiety 
yet is to possess them. The firing has ceased. Ominous 
silence! Whilst cannon roared they knew that the fort 
held out. Whilst the sky was lit by messengers of death 
they could see the national colors flying above it. 

— " the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there!" 



WILLIAM H. FLEMING I23 

But there comes an end at last to waiting and watching, 
and as the first rays of the sun shoot above the horizon 
and gild the eastern shore, behold the sight that gladdens 
their eyes as it 

— "catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, 
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream," 

for there, over the battlements of McHenry, the Stars 
and Stripes float defiant on the breeze, whilst all aroimd 
evidences multiply that the attack has failed, that the 
Americans have successfully resisted it, and that the 
British are withdrawing their forces. For then, and for 
now, and for all time, come the words of the anthem: 

"O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand 

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! 
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land 
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!" 

for — 

— "conquer we must when our cause it is Just, 
And this be our motto, 'In God is our trust'; 

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" 



THE FLAG OF THE UNION 

William H. Fleming 

Former Congressman from Georgia 

(A speech delivered on Memorial Day, 1895, in presenting, on 
behalf of the state of Georgia, a flag to the soldiers of the Sixth 
Regiment.) 

I HA\^ the honor to present to you, in the name of 
the state of Georgia, this banner, under whose silken 



124 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

folds you will hereafter march in peace or in war, as the 
God of fate may decree. 

With unfeigned patriotic pride I point you to the fact 
that this is the old flag of the Union, that Union for 
whose cementing and freedom in the Revolution of '76, 
these Southern colonies made such glorious contribution 
of statesmen and soldiers. It is the same flag that in 
181 2 waved over Southern men under the indomitable 
leadership of Andrew Jackson at the battle of New 
Orleans, when British foes lay for the second time humbled 
at the feet of American valor. It is the same flag that 
in 1846 floated proudly over that army of Southern sol- 
diers who marched into Mexico — one of the handsomest, 
bravest, knightliest bands of warriors that ever faced a 
foe. It is the same flag that, by Southern hands and 
Southern hearts, amid the storm of shot and shell, was 
planted at last in victory on the heights of Monterey, 
and the same flag that caught the enraptured gaze of that 
soldier without stain — the bravest of the brave — Col. 
Jefferson Davis, when, amid carnage and death, he 
twice saved the day at Buena Vista. Yes, again, it is 
the same flag, with the same stars and stripes, that after 
four years of the bloodiest civil war recorded in the 
annals of time, was raised in victory at Appomattox, to 
receive the homage of our peerless Lee, when the stars 
and bars had gone down in defeat, but not in dishonor. 

And here in the shadow of that monmnent, in the 
marble presence of Lee and Jackson and Walker and 
Cobb, and of that private soldier fitly lifted above them 
all, because he oftenest bared his breast to the storm 
of battle — here in the presence of these sacred memorials 
of our dead, turning our backs to the night, and our 



WILLIAM H. FLEMING 125 

faces to the morning, we rejoice that we can still look 
upon the flag of the Union and, in the spirit of Daniel 
Webster, invoke from Almighty God the blessing that, 
when Hf e is done and our eyes are closing upon all earthly 
scenes, "their last lingering glance may behold the broad 
ensign of the repubHc full high advanced, its arms and 
trophies streaming in all their original luster, with not a 
single stripe erased and not a single star obscured, bearing 
for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What 
is all this worth?" or those other words of delusion and 
folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward," but every- 
where, spread all over in characters of Hving Hght, and 
blazing on all its ample folds as it floats over the land 
and over the sea, and in every wind under the whole 
heavens, that other sentiment dear (at last) to every 
American heart, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable." 

Yes, thank Heaven, it is our flag, ours in past achieve- 
ments, ours in present allegiance, and ours in future 
glory. 

May the God of the nations grant that never again 
shall our people be summoned from their peaceful homes 
by the loud tocsin of war; but if this is not to be our 
lot, and duty should call to arms, I charge you, by the 
glorious memory of the past — I charge you that you 
suffer no stain upon this flag, but guard it with your 
lives and with your sacred honor. 



126 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE COHERENT LIFE 

BLISS PERRY 

Editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" 

(Extract from a Commencement oration delivered at the Uni- 
versity of Maine, Jime, 1909.) 

Readers of Carlyle's Journal may recall a certain 
passage written in October, 1841. Carlyle was then 
forty-five; it was seven years since he had come up from 
the Scotch moors to London; his own powers seemed ill- 
adapted to his epoch and circumstances; "it is a strange 
incoherency, this position of mine," he writes — and 
then adds this flashing sentence: "But what is life except 
the knitting up of incoherences into coherence? Courage!" 

Our mortal task, then, according to the Scotch prophet, 
is to bring order out of chaos, consistency out of incon- 
sistency. The character of each person should somehow 
hang together. It should be all of one piece. The ideal 
life, for the individual and for society, is the coherent 
Hfe. These words will suggest, perhaps, those other coun- 
sels of perfection, "the strenuous life" and "the simple 
life," which not many years ago were fully, not to say 
exhaustively, urged upon our attention. The doctrine 
of "the strenuous life" was surely one of the most super- 
fluous gospels ever preached to the American people. 
"The simple life" was and is more gracious in its invita- 
tion to the spirit; but as a practical program it has its 
difiiculties. The coherent Hfe is a clearer working model. 

Coherence is not opposed to richness of function and 
ornament, to manifold variety of organization and capac- 



BLISS PERRY 1 27 

ity. But it does suggest the presence of some unifying 
principle, some coordinating force; and likewise the prac- 
tical ability not only to plan one's work, but to work one's 
plan. Engineers afi&rm that a ship "finds herself" after 
a voyage or two; there is a subtle adjustment of part 
to part, until all that complicated mechanism seems to 
take on brain, soul, personality. A man "pulls himself 
together," as we say, after some disintegrating experience, 
such as bereavement, failure, mental or physical dissipa- 
tion, or it may be after the shock of new ideas, the bewil- 
dering vision of wider horizons. He adjusts himself, pain- 
fully or joyfully, to the altered conditions, and lives once 
more a coherent Hfe. 

When we agree, therefore — as we doubtless shall — 
to praise the principle of coherence, we must make one 
reservation. Our pattern of behavior and conduct must 
not be too small. The rights of growth must be safe- 
guarded. Vitality is the essential thing. The plant is 
worth more than the pot. What seems incoherent often 
seems so because it is full of matter; just as people some- 
times stutter because they have so much to say. Your 
only truly consistent man is the man who is dead; and 
even his tombstone will bear watching. Human society 
advances irregularly. Its alignment is always imperfect. 
It gains ground here and loses there. We tug at the 
ropes, take up the slack a little, hold hard, get together, 
and take up the slack again. Our best efforts are often 
ill-timed, unrhythmical; we are pulling against our com- 
rades without knowing it. There is incoherent energy 
enough all around us; there is a constant lack of dis- 
cipHned energy. 

But beneath the surface of passionate and selfish and 



128 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

cynical discussion there are streams of right tendency, 
currents of humanized thoughts and feelings. You must 
penetrate to them, put yourselves into wholesome rela- 
tions with them. If you are shocked at the contradic- 
tions, the grotesque inequahties of the human lot, then 
do something to level and adjust those inequalities. 

We find our job, ordinarily, by working at it, and we 
simphfy it as we go along. We have first to pull our- 
selves together into physical and mental coherence, and 
then to pull all together like a good crew. Your race will 
be rowed on the river and not in the academic gymnasium. 
The gymnasium has been useful. Your chosen univer- 
sity has taught you something of discipHne, of reverence 
for established institutions, of insight into the intricate 
web of human affairs. For all its guidance toward a 
coherent mastery of your Ufe, you should be grateful. 
And if your university has "unsettled" your provincial 
views, jolted you out of the ruts of complacency, given 
you startling material for thought, pointed out new and 
far distant goals for yourselves and for mankind, you 
should be grateful for this also. 

The fabric of life should be full and rich and honestly 
woven. If an artificial symmetry of pattern has been 
gained by excluding what really belongs in life's texture, 
it will all have to be unraveled and the threads painfully 
woven together again. Coherence is the law of life. 
With bodily tissues momently breaking down and as 
momently renewed, with minds daily distracted, but also 
daily concentrated upon some task, with spiritual ener- 
gies forever withering, but forever refreshed from the 
deep springs, the generations go forth to their work and 
to their labor until the evening. Here and there in the 



FRANCIS G. PEABODY 129 

endless procession you will see a man rich in intellectual 
interests and abounding in practical service who has so 
ordered his activities that he has a right to say with 
proud simphcity, "This one thing I do." That man is 
to be envied, for he has found the secret of the coherent 
life. 



COMMERCIALISM AND IDEALISM 

FRANCIS G. PEABODY 
Professor of Christian morals in Harvard University 

(From a speech delivered at a banquet of the New England Society, 
New York city, December, 1907.) 

There is a picture in the State House of Minnesota 
which tells the story of American experience. A prairie 
schooner with its oxen is toiling westward, bearing a 
plain family to some imdiscovered home, and above this 
prosaic caravan hover the angels of hope and faith and 
love, pointing the way to go. Below is the spirit of com- 
merciahsm, and above the spirit of idealism, and the 
plodding life of America marches on between the angels 
and the soil. 

Here, then, we stand, in these days which are testing 
the American character, and in the conflict of these two 
forces lies the problem of our future. Are we to be the 
victims of our own prosperity, and robbed of our ideals 
by the very magnitude of our commercial gains? Then 
we shall go the way of earlier nations, Persia, Egypt, 
Rome, and the history of our decline will become a warn- 



I30 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

ing and a by-word to the world. Or is it possible that 
the very conditions of our commercial Ufe are likely to 
create among us a new idealism; not the languid and 
esthetic taste which drives people away from our democ- 
racy and makes them at home among aristocracies, mon- 
archies, castles, and ruins, but the robust and virile 
ideaHsm which issues from great tasks, summoning to 
their service the best that is in men? Many signs of 
the times, I think, may encourage one in the behef that 
this emergence of a new idealism is actually occurring 
at the present time, and that our future may be surveyed 
with a confident, even though it may be an anxious, hope. 
Not with a foolish optimism, then, yet not with despon- 
dency or despair, we may survey the perplexing and 
often disturbing movements of our industrial and poHt- 
ical life. We remain a trading, producing, money- 
making people, and whatever character we may achieve 
must be wrought out of this material of our real world; 
but this material, though it be coarse as the clay with 
which the artist works, is the form and mold in which 
our inherited idealism may find new expression and 
beauty. The blood of the fathers flows still in the chil- 
dren. The flood of our commerciaHsm has not drowned 
the instincts of our ideaHsm. There is a bridge at Geneva, 
set where two rivers meet in the turbulent rivalry of 
conflicting currents. One stream, the Rhone, has flowed 
down between pasture banks and runs clear as crystal 
in a broad, deep channel. The other stream, the Aar, 
is a glacial torrent, hurrying and tumultuous with the 
melting of the ice. For a time the muddy torrent seems 
to overwhelm the broader Rhone, and its tranquilHty and 
transparency are submerged and defiled; but soon the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS STAFFORD 13 1 

glacial impurities sink to the bottom of the stream, and 
the Rhone sweeps unvexed and unpolluted to the sea. 
So meet the forces of commercialism and ideahsm in 
American life, and the turbulent current seems to over- 
whelm the tranquil flow; and as one leans over the bridge 
of time it seems as though the resulting river must be a 
turbid glacial stream. Steadily, however, from the foun- 
tains of an honorable past the springs of idealism send 
down their full supply, until at last the broader current 
of idealism may subdue the rush of commercialism, and 
the Rhone of American democracy flow to the ocean of 
its destiny, unvexed and free. 



LAKE CHAMPLAIN IN RETROSPECT 

WENDELL PHILLIPS STAFFORD 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia 

(Extract from an address delivered at Isle la Motte, July 9, 
1909, at the tercentenary celebration of the discovery of Lake 
Champlain.) 

When Champlain passed the place where we now 
stand, he was forty-two years old, — at the prime of life, 
in the full flower of his strength. For a dozen years he 
had followed the sea, as his father had done before him. 
He had been born in one of its ports on the shore of 
France. He had seen Spain and Mexico, Panama and 
the West Indies. He had crossed and recrossed the 
Atlantic. He had cruised and mapped the New Eng- 
land coast, sailed up the broad St. Lawrence, and only 



132 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the year before had laid the foundations of Quebec. 
Much lay behind him, but at least as much before. He 
was yet to make many voyages, to explore the Ottawa, 
to discover two of the Great Lakes — Ontario and Huron 
— and to stand in the place of his King as governor of 
Canada. He belonged to that great breed of men the 
age brought forth abundantly, — a scholar and a soldier. 
He knew how to act as well as think; he could fight as 
well as pray. He had courage to push out into the wil- 
derness, and science to make clear his course, and lan- 
guage to record for after times what he had seen and 
done, — a hand firm on the tiller of state, a heart devoted 
to the cross. It would be hard to find a better type 
of the France of his day — able, ambitious, devout — 
grasping for King and Church at the best the new world 
had to offer. 

Here, the two proudest nations of the old world were 
to have their final grapple for the fairest portion of the 
new. As it had been before the white man came, so was 
it still to be, — the valley of beauty was the highway of 
war. The basin of the St. Lawrence was peopled by the 
French. The coast of the Atlantic from Cape Breton 
to the south was peopled by their hated rivals. That 
was enough. Here ran the unpeopled passageway 
between the two, and for a hundred years none but a 
fool would have built a home beyond the shelter of a fort 
in all these fertile acres. 

In 1757 the greatest man in England took the reins, 
and in two years the French dream of North American 
dominion had dissolved. William Pitt was master. 
Quebec was taken. Crown Point and Ticonderoga were 
in English hands, and the red horrors of one hundred and 



WENDELL PHILLIPS STAFFORD 133 

fifty years were to be thenceforward but a thrilling fire- 
side tale. 

The legends of that ghastly time lie all around us; 
and memories of the later wars that swept the lake are 
thick as leaves of summer, and colored Hke the leaves of 
autumn with glory and romance. We have only to 
reach out our hands to take them. For seven days now 
the conjurer's wand has been w^aved over this lovely 
valley calling the dead to life. We have gone through 
the wicket gate of old Fort Ti step for step with Allen. 
We have seen Arnold, still wearing the rose of loyalty 
uncankered by the worm of treason. We have fought 
with him his desperate fight at Valcour, and leaped with 
him from his flaming bowsprit at Pan ton. We have 
watched the British fleet weigh anchor off this shore 
and move southward to its doom at the hands of 
the invincible Macdonough. Memorial and procession, 
speech and song and pageant have taken up the threads 
of ancient, half-forgotten Hfe, and made the glomng 
pattern Uve anew. Again we see the plumed and painted 
savage on the trail, the settler working with his flint- 
lock in the hollow of his arm, the Highlander in his plaid, 
the hireling Hessian in his scarlet coat, the Colonist in 
his deerskin or his buff and blue, the French and British 
regulars who wear upon their breasts the trophies of 
world-famous battles over-sea. And as we look we 
seem to see the gathering of the nations, not now for w^ar, 
but for the beginning of a new era imder happier skies. 



134 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



OUR DUTY TO POSTERITY 

WILLIAM M. SLOANE 
Professor of History, Columbia University 

(Extract from a speech at a banquet of the New England Society 
of New York city, December 22, 1908.) 

When I look at the splendors of this feast, considering 
what wealth and elegance are here represented, and 
then, in contrast, recall the keen air, the reluctant soil, 
the scanty fare of early New England, I am reminded 
of a well-attested Napoleon anecdote. When the two 
older brothers Bonaparte were rehearsing, in full impe- 
rial costume, for the coronation ceremonies. Napoleon, 
strutting in plush and vair, cast a backward glance 
over the sweeping train of his robe and called, ''Joseph, 
if our father could see us now!" So, when we recall the 
hill-farm and the chores, the plashing saw-mill and the 
slippery skids, or the fishing smack and trading schooners, 
or even the somewhat richer sources of trade from which 
our stocks were reared, we might, in boyish glee, exult 
and wonder what those Puritan forefathers, somber, 
serious, and staid; or the Puritan foremothers, care-worn, 
pious, dihgent, — what those earliest generations would 
think of us now. 

Why is our Puritan conscience uneasy, and why are 
our pleasures nowadays so carefully masked, so closely 
associated with charity and reform and almsgiving ? Why, 
as our faith has weakened, has our philanthropy strength- 
ened? Why this deprecatory attitude toward the poor, 
this pity for sorrow, and this awful leniency toward crime? 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 135 

Because, among the foremost reasons, we have not 
ourselves clean hands, because we have robbed posterity, 
or, in the elegant phrase of the market, have discounted 
the future; because we are dissipating the heritage of 
our children and wasting the substance of generations 
yet to come. There is no necessity to recapitulate the 
national waste. Volume after volume exhibits it in charts 
and statistics, the columns of our newspapers are filled 
with it, the politicians feel the rising tide of indignation, 
and national bureaus are reaching out in all directions to 
take charge of our national resources. 

In general, an optimist is a man who has just been 
talking to a pessimist. You will probably be more 
optimistic than ever a few minutes hence. You will 
renew your zeal for retrenchment, economy, and all the 
virtues of the ancestry we worship here to-night. You 
will recall that, while much has been squandered, much 
is left. You will accept the inevitable; but, if your 
blood is Puritan, you will gird yourselves to battle with 
the thousand showy foes who are conquered before con- 
flict, subdued in the very act of organizing for conflict. 
You will remember the law of history that, do what we 
may, each generation accepts, as a matter of course, 
the hardly won conquests of its predecessor, considering 
them, not as a precious privilege, but as a mere inherent 
right, and thence proceeds on its own struggle for more; 
for more wants and more gratification of those wants. 
Out of the simple inevitably rises the complex, from the 
one the many. We call it progress, the forefathers we 
celebrate would have called it degeneracy. But whatever 
name we give it, the process is inevitable; and the needed 
wealth we must and will find in battle for expansion: 



136 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

in wars of conquest, in civil wars, or in economic wars, 
alike merciless and embittered. The warp and woof of 
time are woven for us, but we are not patterns on it nor 
puppets in action. With indomitable will and a strong 
right arm and an untiring tongue we may warn and we 
may struggle for justice, justice to man among our con- 
temporaries and justice to man among posterity. If we 
do, we may view the future calmly; if we shirk, our 
fears will come on us like a strong man in the night and 
horrors will continue to destroy our rest. 



THE CONSERVATION OF THE STATES 

EDWARD T. TAYLOR 

Congressman from Colorado 

(Extract from a speech in the House of Representatives, Feb- 
ruary I, 1910.) 

I CANNOT believe that either the President or Congress 
will attempt to ruthlessly trample upon the inherent 
rights of the western states to the profit of their own 
resources. If there is to be any royalty imposed upon 
the coal, asphaltum, or any of the rest of our resources, 
the proceeds should pass into the treasury of the state 
whose resources are being thus administered. We have 
no objection to the temporary withdrawal of the public 
domain, pending an expeditious passage of wise and 
systematic laws safeguarding their disposal; and there 
should, of course, be practical and carefully prepared 
restrictions. But we insist that the policy of this Govern- 



EDWARD T. TAYLOR 137 

ment, ever since the adoption of our federal Constitu- 
tion, has been that each state was entitled to and has 
always enjoyed the benefits of the natural wealth and 
resources and climatic conditions within its borders. We 
simply ask at your hands and of this Administration the 
application of that same principle to the states of the 
West that has always prevailed in and been accorded 
to the older commonwealths. Moreover, the legitimate 
and practical regulation and control and safeguarding of 
the resources of each state should be within the province 
of the state government, and whatever revenues are 
derived therefrom should pass into the state and county 
treasuries. 

American citizens do not take kindly to absentee land- 
lordism. We do not reHsh tyrannical interference with 
our local affairs. We do not Hke bureaucratic rule. We 
prefer to be governed by law and by our own people. 
We want laws intelUgently framed in the Hght of the wel- 
fare of the governed, as well as of the governing body. 
We do not consider an officer's proclamation of his own 
virtue a sufficient reason for setting aside the Constitution 
of the United States, or even the acts of Congress. We 
do not want to have to go to the land office and the 
office of the forest supervisor every morning to learn 
what the law is. 

The inhabitants of the Alps of Switzerland, the High- 
lands of Scotland, and the mountainous regions of the earth 
have always been the most intensely patriotic and Uberty- 
loving people, and the citizens of the West now are, and 
the succeeding generations will be, a perpetual exempU- 
fication of this rule. We are two thousand miles away, 
but we are your younger brothers still. Do not impose 



138 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

upon us because you have the power to do so. Let us 
develop our own resources, and we will soon become a 
storehouse of wealth to this nation. 

I firmly believe there is not a state in this Union that 
has one-half the variety or aggregate amount of natural 
resources that is found within the Centennial State. We 
believe our climate excels that of all the other states, 
in proportion as we exceed them in altitude; that our 
soil and cHmate and mountain streams make our agri- 
cultural and horticultural resources the garden spot of 
this nation. At this very moment the county adjoining 
my home is sending twenty-five carloads of apples to 
London, where they top the market of anything that has 
ever been known in this country, both in price and quality. 
Our precious metals exceed the output of any other state 
in the Union. Our coal and our water-power are suffi- 
cient to run an empire for a thousand years. Our oil, 
gas, and asphaltum, and hundreds of other resources 
make us the coming treasury of our country. Colorado 
is the brightest jewel set in the crest of this continent, 
where she shines as the Kohinoor of all the gems of this 
Union. 



GIFFORD PINCHOT 139 

NATURAL RESOURCES AND SPECIAL 
INTERESTS 

GIFFORD PINCHOT 

Former Chief Forester of the United States 

(Extract from an address delivered at the University Club, New 
York city, December 27, 1909.) 

The American people have evidently made up their 
minds that our natural resources must be conserved. 
That is good, but it settles only half the question. For 
whose benefit shall they be conserved — for the benefit of 
the many or for the use and profit of the few? The 
great conflict now being fought will decide. There is no 
other question before us that begins to be so important 
— or that mil be so difficult to straddle — as the great 
question between special interest and equal opportunity, 
between the privileges of the few and the rights of the 
many, between government by men for human welfare 
and government by money for profit, between the men 
who stand for the Roosevelt poHcies and the men who 
stand against them. This is the essence of the conserva- 
tion problem to-day. 

The conservation issue is a moral issue. When a few 
men get possession of one of the necessaries of life, 
either through ownership of a natural resource or 
through unfair business methods, and use that control 
to extort undue profits, as in the recent cases of the 
sugar trust and the beef packers, they injure the aver- 
age man without good reason, and they are guilty of a 
moral wrong. 



I40 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

I believe in one form of government, and I believe in 
the Golden Rule. But we must face the truth that 
monopoly of the sources of production makes it impos- 
sible for vast numbers of men and women to earn a fair 
living. Right here the conservation question touches the 
daily hfe of the great body of our people, who pay the 
cost of especial privilege. And the price is heavy. That 
price may be the chance to save the boys from the saloons 
and the corner gang and the girls from worse, and to 
make good citizens of them instead of bad; for an appal- 
ling proportion of the tragedies of life spring directly 
from the lack of a little money. Thousands of daughters 
of the poor fall into the hands of the "white-slave" 
traders because their poverty leaves them without pro- 
tection. Thousands of famihes, as the Pittsburg survey 
has shown us, lead Kves of brutalizing overwork in return 
for the barest living. 

The people of this country have lost vastly more 
than they can ever regain by gifts of public property 
forever and without charge to men who give nothing 
in return. It is true that we have made superb 
material progress under this system, but it is not well 
for us to rejoice too freely in the sHces the special 
interests have given us from the great loaf of the prop- 
erty of all the people. 

The people of the United States have been the com- 
placent victims of a system of grab often perpetrated 
by men who would be surprised beyond measure to be 
accused of wrongdoing, and many of whom in their pri- 
vate Kves were model citizens. But they have suffered 
from a ciuious moral perversion by which it becomes 
praiseworthy to do for a corporation things which they 



JA^IES R. GARFIELD 141 

would refuse with the loftiest scorn to do for themselves. 
Fortunately for us, all the delusion is passing rapidly 
away. 



WATER-POWER AND THE "INTERESTS" 

JAMES R. GARFIELD 
Former Secretary of the Interior 

(Extract from an address before the Colorado State Conservation 
Commission, at Denver, Colorado, April 18, igio.) 

The private interests that are developing and using 
water of necessity ignore state lines, and nothing will be 
more acceptable to these interests than to have the Federal 
Government withdraw from all attempt to control their 
transactions. Again, unless the Federal Government 
retains and exercises such control, the interests of the 
people of one state may be seriously jeopardized by the 
action of an adjoining state. The use of water is one 
of the immediate and most important of all conservation 
problems. It is therefore necessary to have a clear 
understanding of the conditions and the pending propo- 
sitions. During the last ten years the great possibilities 
for the use of water have been appreciated. Everyw^here 
private interests are attempting to gain control of van- 
tage points for development. The fight is on in nation 
and states. The question is simply this: Shall the pubHc 
control and regulate the use of water in accordance with 
the needs of the public and for the benefit of the public, 
or shall private interests own and control the use of water 



142 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

for their own gain, without regard to the rights and needs 
of the pubHc? It is certain that an intolerable water 
monopoly will be fastened upon our people unless the 
pubHc in both nation and states asserts its authority and 
controls the use of water. 

The use of water for the development of power, for 
storage, and for irrigation means, of necessity, exclusive 
use in particular places, and such exclusive use is readily 
turned into oppressive monopoly, unless regulated by the 
public. It is not enough to deny that a water-power 
trust exists to-day. All the elements that go to make 
up such a trust are in existence and the tendency toward 
such centraHzation grows stronger day by day. The 
conservation of water applies in all its uses. There are 
those who attack conservation, alleging that conservation 
means non-use, non-development, but no such proposi- 
tion has been put forward by the leaders of the conserva- 
tion movement. As has been defined over and over 
again, it means the wise use and development of water 
for domestic purposes, irrigation, water-power, and navi- 
gation, in accordance with the needs of the present genera- 
tion, but with due regard for the future and under control 
of public authority, to the end that unregulated monopoly 
may be prevented; that use by private individuals may 
be limited in time and granted under conditions which 
will yield to the public a fair compensation for the benefit 
derived, and finally prevent unjust or extortionate pay- 
ment by the consuming pubHc. 

During the past few years, both nation and state 
have been attempting to deal with this problem. In 
many minds there seems to be a necessary conflict between 
these jurisdictions, but such is not the case. There are 



IRA E. ROBINSON 143 

duties upon both nation and states. There is work 
enough for all and there is a common ground for cooper- 
ative control and regulation. 

IN WEST VIRGINIA 

IRA E. ROBINSON 
Of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia 

(Extract from an address entitled, "Four Generations between 
the Alleghanies and the Ohio," before the Robinson Genealogical 
Society, at Niagara Falls, New York, August 12, igo8.) 

In the year 1800 the region between the Alleghanies 
and the Ohio was practically a wilderness. The savage 
had only recently departed, and the wild beast remained. 
Settlements were sparse in that territory, and were con- 
fined mostly to the great streams that flowed through 
dense forests. The rich valleys of the Shenandoah and 
the Ohio were sought by many home-makers, but the 
rough country between was passed over because it looked 
not inviting. Many a pioneer crossed that territory of 
magnificent timber, hidden coal, oil, and gas, to the 
better looking land of Ohio and Indiana. He reaped 
more readily for himself, but, we think, not for his pos- 
terity. The mind of man cannot tell true worth from a 
view of the surface. "Man looketh on the outward 
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." So 
this wilderness invited only the strongest and bravest. 
Virginia in time was to part with this rugged western 
domain because the laws and manners suited to the 
gentle slopes of the east were unsuited to the hardiness 
and stern quaHties necessary to the development and 



144 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

growth of the territory between the AUeghanies and the 
Ohio. Here no easy-going mannerisms found home, 
because of the very character of the soil. The Une of 
mountains marked off to the west a new and different 
country. It was a country that of itself drew to it a 
people like unto it, rich within and yet of the plainest 
clothing. The soil was rough and hardy, and it was to 
impart to those on it the same characteristics. Here 
the dealings with stubborn obstacles disciplined men. 
Here like begat like, and lofty mountains produced 
lofty minds. Here good atmosphere instilled good 
blood, regular heart-throbs, sound bodies, and noble 
aspirations, while isolation fostered economy, inde- 
pendence, and contentment. Thus men of character 
arose, and such men, says Emerson, "are the conscience 
of the society to which they belong." True, there was 
migration from them, and other regions were thereby 
benefited, but the great body remained. And here by 
these forces was founded a citizenship fitted for the 
problems of the development and use of the great natural 
resources there existing — fitted for the advancement of 
time. In the very nature of things a separate govern- 
ment of such people became necessary and was estab- 
lished. How appropriate its motto : Montani semper liheril 
Divinely has been founded and left to us the freedom, 
happiness, and love so beautifully penned in verse by 
my old school friend, whose inspirations are as noble 
as his ancestry, of the land of which he sings: 

"In West Virginia skies are blue, 
The hills are green and hearts are true ; 
A joyous welcome waiteth you 
In West Virginia. 



CLIFTON W. BRANSFORD 145 

"in West Virginia skies are bright. 
The twinkling stars make glad the night; 
And noble hearts uphold the right 
In West Virginia. 

"In West Virginia man is free; 
He dwells beneath his own roof-tree ; 
Oh, come, my love, and dwell with me 
In West Virginia." 



VIRGINIA 

CLIFTON W. BRANSFORD 
President of the Owensboro (Kentucky) Banking Company 

(Response on behalf of the American Bankers Association to the 
hospitaUty of Richmond, Virginia, 1900.) 

Ladies and Gentlemen: In the absence of one more 
worthy to perform the pleasing duty, I am requested, 
on behalf of the American Bankers Association, to 
thank the citizens of Richmond for their magnificent 
hospitality. I hardly know what language to employ 
to give fitting expression to our gratitude; but the man 
who could not draw inspiration from this occasion and 
its environments were dead to all the nobler emotions of 
his nature. Born and reared on Kentucky soil, trusted 
and honored by her people beyond my deserts, her interest 
and welfare are dearer to my heart than the ruddy drops 
that give it Hfe. But while I entertain these sentiments 
of affection for my native state, I love her old mother, 
Virginia, the home of my ancestors, not less ardently and 
well. Virginia! Where first was rocked the cradle of 



146 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

independent thought and of religious and poUtical free- 
dom. Virginia! The birthplace of Patrick Henry, the 
matchless orator, whose eloquence stirred men's souls 
and Hghted the fires of universal hberty. Virginia! The 
home of Thomas Jefferson, the incomparable statesman, 
who penned that immortal document, the Declaration 
of Independence, which declares that ''all men are born 
free and equal and are entitled to enjoy the inahenable 
rights of hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
Virginia! The state that gave to the world George 
Washington, the Father of his Country, who led to vic- 
tory an army of patriots rebelling against the despotism 
of their own government. 

Virginia! If all the children named in thy honor 
could join in one loud hosanna of thy just meed of praise, 
the thunders of its refrain would be repeated on the 
eternal shores. 

1 thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention, 
and propose three cheers for Mr. Traylor, the city of 
Richmond, and the grand Old Dominion. 



UTAH 

WILLIAM SPRY 
Governor of Utah 

(Extract from an address of welcome at the opening of the G.A.R. 
national encampment, at Salt Lake City, Utah, August, 1909.) 

The past few years have witnessed a decided westward 
movement of the point designating the center of popula- 



WILLIAM SPRY 147 

tion in the United States. And still that point is far 
east of Utah. The van of restless humanity sweeps 
westward persistently; and the Pacific states vie with 
each other in spirited efforts to attract the home-seeker. 

Perhaps of aU the far western states and territories, 
none has been so frequently foisted, an unwilHng object, 
into the pubhc attention as Utah. Unquestionably, no 
state in the Union has been so often the victim of pubhc 
censure and bad repute, because of gross misrepresenta- 
tion and prejudice, hatched and scattered broadcast, by 
ambitious, selfish indi\dduals whose motives are not 
above censure. As a result, Utah's population has not 
increased with that rapidity which her boundless oppor- 
tunities warrant. Her limitless resources have lain prac- 
tically untouched by the hand of the developer. But 
the confident, determined few, unswerving, undismayed, 
have plodded on, holding fast to their faith in Utah. 
That faith was well placed and those efforts well spent; 
and Utah, by the right and strength of her own worth, 
has forced herself to a position of eminence among the 
states of the Union, rich in possibihty, and attractive in 
resource. 

We invite you to avail yourselves of this occasion to 
make a close inquiry into the representations which we 
advance regarding our state. We direct your attention 
to her agricultural resources — her farms and fields of 
waving grain — her soil, appropriated to the cultivation 
of vegetables and flowers — her orchards, laden with a 
wide variety of luscious fruit that brings a premium in 
the world's markets. We urge you to direct an enquir- 
ing eye over our ranges and mark the sleek cattle; note 
the millions of sheep that play an important part in the 
country's wool production. 



148 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Investigate our mining operations and be convinced 
that within the boundaries of the state of Utah is one 
of nature's richest treasure vaults plentifully stored with 
the precious minerals of the earth. 

Allow yourselves to be moved by the grandeur of our 
snow-capped mountains, the beauty of our valleys, the 
mystery of our great dead sea, the color of our skies. 
Drink the breath of rejuvenation that comes with our 
cool mountain breezes. 

Crowning Utah's achievements, paving the way for 
future generations of broad-minded, intelHgent citizens, 
is her educational system. If you carry no other fact 
away with you, write on the tablets of your memory 
that during the school year just closed, the state of 
Utah expended in the grammar grades alone for every 
day the schools were open over thirteen thousand dollars 
for an estimated common school population of less than 
one hundred thousand. 

Meet, mingle with, and know our people in their busi- 
ness and in their homes. Judge them by the only true 
test of American citizenship — ability and fideHty — and 
we shall be more than friends. 



WILLIAM O. BRADLEY 149 



"OLD KENTUCKY HOME" 

WILLIAM O. BRADLEY 
United States Senator from Kentucky 

(Condensed from his speech delivered at the formal dedication 
of the Kentucky building at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 
June I, 1893.) 

Into this splendid presence we come to dedicate the 
"Old Kentucky Home." 

This day, with her sister states, Kentucky joins in 
freedom's swelling chorus as it sweeps from sea to sea. 
With them she extends, in hospitality, a hand that never 
struck defenseless foe and never knew dishonor. God 
bless Kentucky! We would not part with one atom of 
her soil or one line of her history. Would that I might 
weave a fitting garland for her brow. Would that I 
possessed the brush and genius of Raphael, that I might 
paint her as she is. Would that \\ith the chisel of Phidias 
I might create anew the forms and features of her glorious 
sons. Would that with the descriptive power and vivid 
imagery of Byron I might portray the lives and actions 
of her heroes and statesmen. Would that I were gifted 
with the subHme and soaring melody of Llilton, that I 
might charm the world with the song of her glory. But 
even then, I should be unable to reproduce the verdure 
of her fields, the grandeur of her mountains, the bright- 
ness of her skies, the heroism of her people, the wisdom 
of her statesmen, and the beauty of her women — God 
bless them — "the fairest that e'er the sim shone on." 

One himdred and one years ago this day, Kentucky 



150 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

was admitted into the Union. She was among the first 
to enter, and will be the last to leave it. Her history has 
been eventful. The trials, endurance, and heroism of 
pioneer life were never more fully exemplified elsewhere. 
Harrod, Boone, Kenton, Clark, McAfee, Whitley, and 
Logan are names blended with hers as the warp is blended 
with the woof. They hewed their way through forests 
primeval, and drove the savage beyond her borders. 
After them came the pioneer statesman, Marshall, Bul- 
litt, Nicholas, Brown, Breckinridge, and Clay. The 
sons of these knight errants of civiHzation inherited 
the endurance, bravery, and abihty of their sires. No 
wonder, then, it is that the name of Kentucky is famous 
throughout the world. 



WASfflNGTON AND LINCOLN 

MARTIN W. LITTLETON 
Formerly of the Dallas, Texas, Bar; now of New York city 

(Extract from an address on the occasion of the celebration of 
Washington's Birthday by the Ellicott Club of Buffalo, New York, 
February 22, 1906.) 

The strongest thing about the character of the two 
greatest men in American history is the fact that they 
did not surrender to the passion of the time. Washington 
withstood the French radicalism of Jefferson and the 
British conservatism of Hamilton. He invited each of 
them into his cabinet; he refused to allow either of them 
to dictate his poHcy. His enemies could not terrify him 



MARTIN W. LITTLETON 151 

by assault; his friends could not deceive him with flattery. 
In this respect he resembled in marked degree the splendid 
character of Lincoln. 

The single Ught that led Lincoln's feet along the hard 
highway of life was justice; the single thought that 
throbbed his brain to sleep at night was justice; the 
single prayer that put m whispered words the might and 
meaning of his soul was justice; the single impulse that 
lingered in a heart already wrung by a nation's grief was 
justice; in every word that fell from him in touching 
speech there was the sad and sober spirit of justice. He 
sat upon the storm when the nation shook mth passion. 
Treason, wrong, injustice, crime, graft, a thousand wTongs 
in system and in single added to the burden of this melan- 
choly spirit. Silently, as the soul of the just makes war 
on sin; silently, as the spirit of the mighty mthstands the 
spite of wrong; silently, as the heart of the truly "T^rave 
resists the assault of the coward, this prince of patience 
and peace endured the calumny of the coimtry he died 
to save. 

Lincoln blazed the way from the cabin to the crown; 
working away in the silence of the woods, he heard the 
murmur of a storm; toiling in the forest of flashing leaf 
and armored oak, he heard Lexington calling imto Sum- 
ter, Valley Forge crying unto Gettysburg, and Yorktown 
shouting unto Appomattox. Lingering before the dying 
fires in a humble hut, he saw with sorrowful heart the 
blazing camps in Virginia, and felt the awful stillness of 
slumbering armies. Beneath it all he saw the strained 
muscles of the slave, the broken spirit of the serf, the 
bondage of immortal souls; and beyond it all, looking 
through the tears that broke from a breaking heart, he 



152 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

saw the widow by the empty chair, the aged father's 
fruitless vigil at the gate, the daughter's dreary watch 
beside the door, and the son's solemn step from boyhood 
to old age. And behind this picture he saw the lonely 
family altar upon which was offered the incense of tears 
coming from millions of broken hearts; and looking still 
beyond he saw the battle-fields where silent slabs told of 
the death of those who died in deathless valor. He saw 
the desolated earth, where golden grain no more broke 
from the rich, resourceful soil, where the bannered wheat 
no longer rose from the productive earth; he saw the 
South with its smoking chimneys, its deserted hearth- 
stones, its maimed and wounded trudging with bowed 
heads and bent forms back to their homes, there to want 
and to waste and to struggle and to build up again; he 
saw the North recover itself from the awful shock of arms 
and start anew to unite the arteries of commerce that 
had been cut by the cruel sword of war. And with his 
gentle hand, and as a last act of his sacrificial hfe, he 
dashed the awful cup of brother's blood from the lustful 
lip of war and shattered the cannons' roar into nameless 
notes of song. 

Then turn to the vision of Washington leaving a planta- 
tion of peace and plenty to suffer on the blood-stained 
battle-field, surrendering the dominion over the princely 
domain of a Virginia gentleman to accept the privations 
of an unequal war — the vision of patriotism over against 
the vision of greed. 

Oh, my friends, we must live so that the spirit of these 
men shall settle all about our fives and deeds; so that 
the patriotism of their service shall burn as a fire in the 
hearts of all who shall follow them. The Constitution 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 153 

which came from one, the universal Uberty which came 
from the other, must be set in our hearts as institutions 
in the blood of our race, so that this Government shall 
not perish imtil every drop of that blood has been shed in 
its defense; and we shall behold the flag of our country 
as the beautiful emblem of their unselfish Hves, whose 
red ran out of a soldier's heart, whose w^hite was bleached 
by a nation's tears, whose stars were hung there to sing 
together until the eternal morning when all the world 
shall be free. 



THE PERSONALITY OF LINCOLN 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
Late Editor of the ^^ Century Magazine" 

(Extract from an address before the students of Mount Holyoke 
CoUege, June, 1909.) 

What a wonderful thing is personahty! Think of all 
it means in history, in religion, in our ow^n Uves. Lin- 
coln is one of the most interesting personahties in all 
history. This personality has perplexed many people. 
Some are doubtful if Lincoln is as great as many say. 
But the more he is studied the firmer is his position. 

Probably no great historical figure in the realm of 
action ever had Lincoln's intense humorousness, com- 
bined with so keen and racy a wit. He was imdoubtedly 
the greatest wit and humorist that ever ruled a nation. 
He was a sad man, a man who suffered, a man who was 
sometimes melancholy. But humor helped him to live. 



154 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Humor helped Lincoln in his leadership. His power of 
expression also helped him in his leadership. There may 
be found in all his great utterances a strain which is like 
the leading motive, a strain of mingled pathos and hero- 
ism. This is shown in the Gettysburg address and in 
the letter to Congress. Lincoln's task was a great one, 
— a task between the devil and the deep sea. On the 
one side were the border states, telling him that if he 
touched slavery they could not keep their constituencies 
on the side of the Union; on the other side were the Abo- 
litionists, telUng him that unless he at once freed the 
slaves, his administration would be shorn of moral sup- 
port and the war would end in failure and disgrace. His 
delay in getting out the emancipation proclamation was 
necessary to statesmanship. 

That inordinately tall countryman, with a shawl thrown 
over his gaunt figure, crossing alone the little park between 
the White House and the War Department, if appealed to 
by some distressed private soldier or citizen, could order 
justice done by a written sentence as surely as could any 
Asiatic autocrat by issued edict. While often yielding 
to the dictates of his pitying heart in individual cases, 
and showing constantly almost abnormal patience, those 
who mistook his charity for weakness were Hable to sudden 
enUghtenment. The fact was only lately pubUshed that 
Colonel Hay once saw the long-enduring Lincoln take 
an officer by the coat collar, carry him bodily to the door, 
and throw him in a helpless heap outside. 

Let me close with the memory of a night of the spring 
of the year 1865, in the time of the blooming of lilacs, 
as says the wonderful poem. I was waiting in Philadel- 
phia for Lincoln's funeral train to start, as it was my 



JOSEPH G. CANNON 155 

duty to accompany it to Newark. I had and have little 
desire to look upon faces from which the Hght of hfe is 
departed, but suddenly it came upon me that I had never 
seen the great President and must not let go by this 
last opportunity to behold at least the deserted temple 
of a lofty soul. To my grief, I found it was too late; 
the poUce had drawn their hne across the front of Inde- 
pendence Hall. But my earnest desire prevailed, and 
I was the last to pass in by the window and behold, 
lying on the very spot where he had dedicated himself 
to assassination rather than desert the principles of the 
fathers, there emulated, in a sudden dazzle of hghts and 
flowers, the still features of that face we all now know 
so well. 



REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN 

JOSEPH G. CANNON 
Speaker of the House of Representatives 

(Extract from a speech delivered before the Chamber of Commerce 
of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, February 12, 1910.) 

In the year 1858 I heard two of the Lincoln-Douglas 
debates. It was a wonderful contest — between giants. 
Douglas, born in Vermont, a great politician, of national 
and world-wide reputation, w^as remarkably strong and 
resourceful. In point of fact his heart beat true to human 
freedom, but as he was a member of that great party 
that was dominated by servile labor, his ambition created 
the desire to be President. The contest was fought out. 



156 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Lincoln failed to reach the Senate, but the whole country 
was aflame, and at the end of those great debates he 
had a national if not a world-wide reputation. 

Then came the Cooper Union speech. Then came the 
campaign in Ohio in 1859, and, when i860 came, IlHnois 
concluded to present him as her candidate for the nomina- 
tion for the presidency. 

The convention was held at Decatur, Illinois, in a 
structure erected between two brick buildings, with posts 
cut from the forest, stringers cut from the forest, and 
covered with boughs cut from the forest, and the ends 
open. The multiplied thousands gathered — earnest, 
determined men. Just about the time the convention 
was organized, a voice came, " Make way for Dick Oglesby 
and John Hanks." After much effort a narrow passage 
was made, and they passed through it, bearing two old 
walnut rails. They were set up, and there was a legend 
on a strip of cotton, "These two rails were made by 
John Hanks and Abraham Lincoln in 1830." There was 
great enthusiasm. The crowd closed up, and the cry 
came for Lincoln. He could not get through; and great, 
tall, gaunt man as he was, they literally picked him up 
and passed him over their heads. He did not talk much. 
Somebody asked him, an hour before, if it was proper for 
him to be there, as he was a candidate for the presidency; 
and a queer expression came over his face, and he said, 
"The truth is, I am most too much of a candidate to be 
here, but hardly enough to stay away." 

The audience were wild with enthusiasm. He talked 
a little, not to exceed five minutes. Somebody sang out, 
"Abe, did you make those rails?" His reply came: 
"John Hanks says we made those rails. I do not know 



JOSEPH G. CANNON 157 

whether we did or not, but I have made many better 
ones than those." 

The Seward people in that convention were swept off 
their feet, and a delegation unanimously chosen by that 
convention, consisting of the personal and poHtical friends 
of Abraham Lincoln, went to the convention held in the 
wigwam a week or two later at Chicago. You all know 
the result. 

The emancipation proclamation was given to the world 
in September, 1862. That proclamation had been written 
for three months, and Lincoln, mth his great desire to 
save the repubhc, ^dth his great knowledge, with his 
great courage, was waiting, waiting, waiting until the 
boys in blue might gain a victory or two; waiting until 
their letters should come from the southland, where they 
were fighting the battles of the repubhc, to their brothers 
and parents and friends, that they might also make 
converts; waiting for the people to rise up and sing 
against the opposition of the sensational press and the 
cowardly would-be leaders; waiting for them to sing, 
"We're coming, Father Abraham, three himdred thou- 
sand more." 

And all the while, with all the abuse, with the quarrels 
in the Cabinet, mth the premier suggesting that the 
conduct of the war had better be left to him; with the 
failures of generals; mth the universal criticism of gen- 
erals, of colonels, and even of captains; with the false 
reports that were sent by wire and correspondence; ^dth 
doubt and fear; with the credit of the repubhc disap- 
pearing, this tall, gaunt, sad-faced man, born of the 
children of toil, kept his courage. To me there is no 
greater example in the history of the human race of 



158 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

magnificent leadership and patriotism than that of 
Abraham Lincohi during tliat contest. 

George WiUiam Curtis in notifying Lincohi of his 
second nomination said: 

Amid tlie bitter taunts of eager friends and the fierce denun- 
ciation of enemies, now moving too fast for some, now too slow 
for otliexs, tliey have seen yxtxi throughout this tremendous contest 
patient. s;igacious, faithful, just, loaning ujx">n the heart of tlie 
great mass of the people and satislied to be moved by its mighty 
pulsations. 

In tliat one sentence Mr. Curtis e.xpressed the great 
qualities of Lincoln and the secret of his success as a 
leader of the American people. 

Moses was a great character. He led his people over 
the desert for forty years to the promised land; but, in 
my judgment, speaking respectfully, I believe that Abra- 
ham Lincoln was the greatest leader that tliis world ever 
produced, and in that great struggle for a government of 
the people, and for free men and freedom, he laid a founda- 
tion upon which I trust and beheve the republic will 
endure through the ages. 



ABR.\K\]\I LINCOLN 

FRANK W. BENSON 
Governor of Oregon 

(Condensed from a speech delivered at a Lincoln Day banquet 
of the Republican Club of Baker City, Oregon, February 12, 1910.) 

We had elected many ^Nise, capable, and patriotic men 
to the high office of chief ruler long before Lincoln was 



FRANK W. BENSON 159 

bom. We had made a large and important part of our 
national history before he had learned to read by the 
light of a pine torch. But not one of his predecessors, 
or of those who have succeeded him in that high office, 
has ever called forth the intense affection of the people 
as did Lincoln. And why ? 

I fancy that it was because he was the second instance 
in the world's history of a ''man of sorrows"; "he was 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities." It is written 
not only in the world's written histories, but in the mul- 
titude of portraits which are scattered broadcast among 
the millions who still love him, that in the expression of 
his countenance there was the infinite sadness that 
bespoke the tragedy of a nation's anguish. It is said 
that in the throes of the nation's peril he was praying 
to his mother's God to save his people. 

The things upon which we dwell with most delight 
to-day are the stories of his tenderness and infinite kind- 
ness which prompted him to pardon the boy soldier, 
condemned to death, who slept at his post in the hour 
of danger; his sorrow for the trooper who languished in 
the prison pen of the South; the entire absence in his 
voice and heart of any malice against those who were 
fighting the battle of disloyalty. In other words, while 
other men, influenced by pride, vanity, or a false con- 
ception of the nation's ideal, and misled by the false 
notion that the nation's idol must be free from the com- 
mon hopes and fears, the common like and dishkes, the 
common hates and loves, concealed these features in 
their make-up, Lincoln never tried to be other than him- 
self; there was no concealment, no hypocrisy in his 
nature, and, because he was, at all times, entirely free 



i6o AIMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

from hypocrisy and pretense, because he was at all times 
true to the characteristics and the nature which God had 
given him, his humanity, free from the artificial, appeals 
to us all. 

Finally, it occurs to me that the memory and greatness 
of Lincoln are more sacredly cherished and more fully 
appreciated in the extreme West than in any other 
portion of the United States. And it is natural that it 
should be so. The type of American manhood which 
could lay aside the comforts, the assuredness, and the 
luxuries of the long-settled and fully developed homes 
of the East, in order that they might pierce the forests 
and fathom the mysteries of the unexplored West, the 
type to which Lincoln belonged, was primal in its instincts; 
was naturally indifferent to the conventionaHties and 
niceties of an artificial civilization. These traits have 
been, in a measure, transmitted by the builders of the 
Western Empire to their offspring, and hence the West 
comprehends and appreciates the primal viriHty, the 
largeness of view, and the splendid contempt of trifles 
which seemed to actuate our greatest President, and 
hence to us he stands for more that is admirable and 
lovable to us than can be possible to the dwellers in 
the East; not because he was born in a log cabin in the 
wilderness, not that he spHt rails in the forest, not that 
he was a frontiersman, but rather that his inheritance 
and environment were such that he was particularly 
one of us, and we, better than any others, comprehend 
and appreciate the splendor of his achievements. 



HOKE SMITH i6i 



TRIBUTE TO McKINLEY 

HOKE SMITH 
Governor of Georgia 

(An address delivered at the memorial services in honor of Presi- 
dent McKinley, held in Atlanta, Georgia, September 19, 1901.) 

Fellow citizens: We mourn a dead President. We give 
thanks for a Christian hfe. 

Mr. McKinley rose from simple walks through many 
pubHc trusts to the highest office. His record will stand 
severest scrutiny. It shines with the noblest of human 
traits. He loved with all the ardor of his nature his 
God, his country, and his fellowman. 

We of this section owe him a special debt. It needed 
not Cardenas and Santiago to remove all bitterness from 
the Southern heart. We had been home in our father's 
house for thirty years, and we loved all its inmates; but 
we needed the great brain and warm heart and fervent 
words of this loyal lover of all states to free every thought 
of criticism, to show the American people the patriotism 
of their brethren. 

His pubHc services have been great; his private services 
not less so. 

In the home hfe must be preserved the safeguard of 
our country's future. What an example he has set! 
What a standard he has raised! How thoughtful, how 
pure, how tender, as he fell back with the very wound 
that slew him, asking that the news be not exaggerated 
to the partner of his trials and his joys! 

He had lived the life of an earnest professor of faith in 



i62 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Jesus Christ. The highest honors could not shake his 
faith or move his trust or hopes. To his fellowmen he 
did his greatest service as he died. The foremost of 
earthly rulers, he yielded without a murmur to the Heav- 
enly Ruler. From his lofty elevation, from the office 
of Chief Magistrate over eighty milhon people, his 
answer to the call was, "It is God's way; His will, not 
ours, be done," and then ^ith his last breath he sang, 
"Nearer, my God, to Thee." 

It was his last message to the American people and to 
the civiUzed world, and it will be repeated and heard 
and known for years and years to come — his greatest 
message, his greatest service to his fellowmen, his country, 
and his God. 

He has given up the corruptible to put on incorruption. 
He has given up the mortal to put on immortahty, and 
that which was written has been brought to pass — death 
is swallowed up in victory. Thanks be to God, death 
had for him no sting, and even the grave was to him a 
victory. 



EULOGY OF ROBERT E. LEE 

CHARLES E. FENNER 
Of the New Orleans Bar 

(Extract from an oration delivered at the unveiling of the statue 
of General Lee, at Lee Circle, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 
22, 1884.) 

Bountiful nature had endowed Robert E. Lee with 
exceptional gifts of physical beauty. The eye of the 



CHARLES E. FENNER 163 

South Carolina poet, Ha3^ne, once rested upon him in 
the first year of the war, when he was already on the 
hither verge of middle age, as he stood in the fortifica- 
tions of Charleston, surrounded by ofi&cers, and he has 
left the following pen picture of him: "In the middle of the 
group, topping the tallest by half a head, was, perhaps, 
the most striking figure we had ever encountered, the 
figure of a man seemingly about fifty-six or fifty-eight 
years of age, erect as a poplar, yet Hthe and graceful, 
with broad shoulders well thrown back, a fine, justly 
proportioned head posed in unconscious dignity, clear, 
deep, thoughtful eyes, and the quiet, dauntless step of 
one every inch the gentleman and soldier. Had some 
old EngHsh cathedral crypt or monumental stone in 
Westminster Abbey been smitten by a magician's wand 
and made to yield up its knightly tenant restored to his 
manly vigor, with chivalric soul beaming from every 
feature, some grand old crusader or Red Cross warrior, 
who, believing in a sacred creed and espousing a glorious 
principle, looked upon mere Hfe as nothing in the com- 
parison, we thought that thus would he have appeared, 
unchanged in aught but costume and surroundings. And 
the superb soldier, the glamour of the antique days about 
him, was Robert E. Lee." 

If such was the Lee of fifty-six years, what must have 
been the splendid beauty of his youth? The priceless 
jewel of his soul found fit setting in this grand physique, 
marked by a majestic bearing and easy grace and cour- 
tesy of gesture and movement, sprung from perfect 
harmony and symmetry of Hmb and muscle, instinct 
with that vigorous health, the product of a sound mind 
in a sound body. 



l64 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Such was the magnificent youth who graduated from 
West Point with the honors of his class, and dedicated 
himself to the service of his country. It was easy to 
see that ''Fate reserved him for a bright manhood." 
Not his the task, by the eccentric flight of a soaring ambi- 
tion, to "pluck bright Honor from the pale-faced moon," 
or with desperate greed to ''dive into the bottom of the 
deep and drag up drowned Honor by the locks." This 
great engineer laid out the road of his Ufe along the 
undeviating line of duty, prepared to bridge seas and 
scale mountains; to defy foes and to scorn temptations; 
to struggle, to fight, to die, if need be, but never to swerve 
from his chosen path. Honor and Fame were not cap- 
tives in his train. Free and bounteous, they ambuscaded 
his way and crowned him as he passed. 

It is fitting that monuments should be erected to such 
a man. 

The imagination might, alas! too easily, picture a 
crisis, in the future of the repubhc, when virtue might 
have lost her seat in the hearts of the people, when the 
degrading greed of money-getting might have under- 
mined the nobler aspirations of their souls, when luxury 
and effeminacy might have emasculated the rugged 
courage and endurance upon which the safety of states 
depends, when corruption might thrive and Hberty might 
languish, when pelf might stand above patriotism, self 
above country, mammon before God, and when the 
patriot might read on every hand the sure presage: 

" 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay!" 

In such an hour let some inspired orator, alive to the 
peril of his country, summon the people to gather round 



THOMAS J. KERNAN 165 

this monument, and, pointing to that noble figure, let 

him recount his story, and if aught can arouse a noble 

shame and awaken dormant virtue, that may do it. 

The day is not distant when all citizens of this great 

republic will unite in claiming Lee as their own, and, 

rising from the study of his heroic life and deeds, will 

cast away the prejudices of forgotten strife and exclaim: 

"We know him now; all narrow jealousies 
Are silent, and we see him as he moved — 
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, 
With what sublime repression of himself — 
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life." 



ROBERT E. LEE AND WASHINGTON COLLEGE 

THOMAS J. KERNAN 
Of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bar 

(Extract from an address at the one hundredth anniversary of 
the birth of General Lee, at New Orleans, Louisiana, January 19, 
1907.) 

I COUNT myself thrice happy to have been one of those 
who sat at the feet of General Lee in the grand old halls 
of Washington College, hallowed by so many precious 
memories. Those were the heroic days of that historic 
institution. A nursUng of the Revolution, it had been 
endowed by Washington; but it was left for Lee to breathe 
into it the deathless Hfe of his immortal spirit. In April, 
1865, he surrendered the rear-guard, as it were, of one 
generation of Southern youth at Appomattox; in October, 
1865, he assumed command of the advance guard of the 



l66 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

next generation of Southern youth at Lexington. Napo- 
leon grandiosely said to his Old Guard at Fontainebleau, 
''If I have consented to survive, my comrades, it is 
but to write the story of the great things that you and 
I have done together." He died miserably at St. Helena, 
without redeeming this pledge, or accomplishing aught 
else of good. Lee, by his conduct, said in effect, "It 
has pleased God to let me survive my comrades, whom I 
have taught to die grandly; I will consecrate my declining 
years to teaching their sons to live nobly." And the 
fulfilment of that promise is writ large in the history of 
the last five years of his life, consecrated to the cause of 
education. I doubt if mere human annals furnish an 
instance of devotion to duty so simply grand, so purely 
noble. 

And so, the great chieftain, who had just laid down the 
supreme command of all the Southern armies, and still 
a prisoner on parole, rode unattended into Lexington 
on Traveler and assumed command of Washington Col- 
lege, with its staff of four professors and its corps of fifty 
students. Instantly, almost, the power of his mighty 
genius and the magic of his great name wrought a revolu- 
tion. He at once rallied around him the South's greatest 
educators and the flower of Southern youth. And hope 
was born again in the hearts of Southern people, there 
upon that sacred spot, where the ideals of the Old South, 
so beautifully realized in him, were cherished and pre- 
served, and the spirit of the New South, inspired by 
him, was born and nurtured into strength and beauty. 

Priceless, indeed, is the heritage left us by our gallant 
fathers and gracious mothers of the Old South. Grace- 
ful manners and noble deeds were the very staple of 



DUNBAR ROWLAND 167 

their daily lives, from which the Old South wove her 
wondrous story. There was the home of honor, the 
citadel of chivalry. Her men were the bravest and the 
tenderest; her women the truest and fairest. Sweet 
ghmpses of those halcyon days are indissolubly blended 
with the earliest recollections of my childhood; but it 
were too long to tell o'er the tale of all the beauties of 
the sunny, happy Hfe of the Old South of long ago. It is 
all enshrined in history and hallowed in song and story. 
The Sim ne'er smiled upon a land more fair, nor on a 
people more worthy of so fair a land. But the greatest 
and most precious of all the legacies of all the ages is 
the ideal realized in the hfe and character of Robert E. 
Lee, the kindly gentleman, the peerless soldier, the great 
educator, the human exemplar — Godlike in his grandeur, 
Christlike in his simphcity. 



TRIBUTE TO JEFFERSON DAVIS 

DUNBAR ROWLAND 

Director of the Department of Archives and History of the 
State of Mississippi 

(Extract from a speech made in accepting a portrait of Jefferson 
Davis presented by the Mississippi division of the Daughters of 
the Confederacy for the Mississippi Hall of Fame, January 19, 1905.) 

In Grattan's eulogy of Chatham he says that the great 
Englishman "was born to strike a blow in the world 
that should resound through its history." How well 
does that phrase portray the career of Jefferson Davis. 



l68 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

There are certain attributes of character which rarely 
fail to make leaders of men who possess them. Mr. 
Davis had a rare combination of these great quahties. 
He was independent, self-reliant, and resolute. He had 
earnest and intelligent convictions, combined with intense 
devotion to principle. He had a magnificent courage, 
which commanded the admiration of the people, and an 
integrity of character which won their confidence. He 
was not an ephemeral growth, springing into existence 
from abnormal social conditions, but the splendid prod- 
uct of a civihzation which had given to the world the 
most superb characters known to history. Jefferson 
Davis was of patrician mold. He was endowed by 
nature with the rarest quahties of both mind and spirit, 
to which had been added the highest culture and training. 
The people of Mississippi delighted to honor him, and 
during the long period of his pubhc service not a shadow 
of wrong ever marked his conduct. It was but an added 
proof of the high esteem in which the Southern people 
held him that when the Confederacy was organized he 
was placed at its head. Mr. Davis had a wonderful 
comprehension of the terrible struggle which was before 
him, and with rare judgment he called to his side the 
men who became the heroes of history. Together they 
led the great struggle for an independent nationality. 
They felt that the Constitution of their fathers had been 
violated, and with a spirit which animated the makers 
of that palladium of hberty, they ralhed to its defense. 
The cause for which they fought failed, but greatness 
does not always consist in gaining something, but in 
being true. Not for one moment during that long and 
bitter struggle did these princely spirits waver in their 



DUNBAR ROWLAND 169 

devotion to duty. They emerged from that bloody con- 
flict with unstained honor, and no memory of their 
recreancy remains to-day to torture the sons of the 
South. 

Great as the leader of the Southern Confederacy appears 
at every period of his Hfe, at no time does his adamantine 
strength of character display itself as in the hour of 
defeat. With a courage that could not be broken, and 
a fortitude which was strengthened by afiliction, he bore 
himself in that dark hour as only a hero could, and gave 
to the world no outward sign of what his great soul 
suffered. Though not a ray of that splendid hope, which 
had arched its beautiful bow above his country, remained 
to cheer him, he refused to regard hfe as a burden and a 
failure. He beheved that Hfe was the supremest gift of 
God, and continued to pursue its aims and ends with a 
noble interest that is unprecedented in history and beau- 
tiful to contemplate. He toiled, even to extreme old 
age, to give as his parting blessing to the children of the 
South a true history of their fathers' deeds. 

To us he represents all that is best in Southern char- 
acter, and we shall continue to honor him as long as 
one fair green stretch of this beautiful land, for whose 
honor he gave himself a willing sacrifice, remains in our 
keeping. 



lyo AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



JEFFERSON DAVIS AND MISSISSIPPI 

THOMAS SPIGHT 
Congressman from Mississippi 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, 
March 26, 1910.) 

Mr. Chairman: A few days ago the gentleman from 
Ohio, under ''leave to print," had inserted in the Record 
a belated speech which he vainly sought an opportunity 
to deliver during the last session of Congress. He then 
wanted to prevent the picture of Jefferson Davis from 
appearing upon the silver service about to be presented 
to a battle-ship named in honor of the state of Mississippi. 
For reasons which reflect credit upon the Republican 
leadership of the House, he failed to give birth to this 
speech at that time. The silver service with the etching 
of Mr. Davis was accepted, and has been on the Missis- 
sippi for nearly ten months, and no good reason can be 
seen for making this deliverance of the gentleman from 
Ohio at this untimely date. It was doubtless a burden 
to him to carry it longer, and it had to come, and I hope 
he feels relieved. 

The gentleman from Ohio was not content to hurl his 
anathemas at Mr. Davis, but he indulges in gratuitous, 
unprovoked slander of all the people of the South in 
this unfounded statement: 

Silently and insidiously, night and day, in the schools, churches, 
and other organizations for the control of public sentiment in the 
South, the leaven of distrust and discontent seems to be constantly 
working. 



THOMAS SPIGHT 171 

I believe it was Edmund Burke, the great Irish orator, 
who said he did not know how to draw an indictment 
against a whole people. The gentleman from Ohio has 
gone far beyond the capacity of Burke and has indicted 
all the women and all the girls, all the men and all the 
boys, all the preachers and all their congregations in the 
South; but I advise him that, while it is easy to make a 
charge, there ought to be some sort of evidence to sustain 
it. This the gentleman from Ohio has not got, and he 
can never find it. I well remember that after the life of 
the sainted McKinley had been taken by a murderous 
anarchist, in these same schoolhouses and churches and 
in the temples of justice all over the Southland the 
"voice of mourning" was heard and resolutions of sym- 
pathy for the sorely stricken wife were adopted. McKin- 
ley was a Republican and also from Ohio, but he was an 
apostle of the doctrine of ''peace on earth, good will 
toward men." He fought us valiantly during the great 
war, but he quit fighting when we laid down our arms. 
He spoke words of kindness and cheer, and we loved 
him. He illustrated the truth of what Sir Walter Scott 
makes one of his characters in "Old Mortality" say, "I 
never knew a real soldier who was not a true-hearted 
gentleman." 

I shall not permit myself to be provoked into a dis- 
cussion of the great questions upon which we divided 
in the fateful days from 1861 to 1865. No good can 
come of it, and I have no disposition to arouse antago- 
nisms which it were better to allow to sleep. Let the 
impartial historian of the future be the arbiter to settle 
the burning issues for which we fought, each as God gave 
him to see the right. One thing we may all rejoice in, 



172 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

that to-day we are all citizens of the same great republic. 
As was demonstrated in the recent war with Spain, when 
the Stars and Stripes are in the forefront of battle, there 
is no North, no South, no East, no West, but all are 
Americans, ready to defend with their lives the honor of 
the flag. In that war I saw my own son, with the blood 
of a Confederate soldier in his veins, side by side with 
the son of a Federal soldier under the flag of a common 
country, each ready to do, to dare, and to die in defense 
of its sacred folds. 

That Mississippi is proud of her history and of her 
position as a sovereign state of the Union is not to be 
wondered at. In field and forum, in peace and in war, 
her position has been established. In the realm of oratory 
Prentiss and Lamar must ever remain shining examples. 
As soldiers, she points with pride to Davis and Walthall 
and dozens of others. In constructive statesmanship 
none excelled her George. In the science of jurisprudence 
her field is full. No greater preachers than her Lowrey, 
Galloway, and Waddell ever proclaimed the "unsearch- 
able riches of the gospel." Her Anglo-Saxon blood is 
of the purest; her citizenship is of the best; her women 
of the fairest and sweetest, and her men of the bravest. 

To-day we have what can be claimed by no other 
state in the Union, seven native sons of Mississippi in 
the Senate of the United States — Money and Percy, 
from Mississippi; Clarke, from Arkansas; Newlands, 
from Nevada; Gore, from Oklahoma; Chamberlain, from 
Oregon; and Bailey, from Texas. This is a record which 
has never been equaled. 

If we are, in truth and in fact, coequal states, there 
should be no caviling as to individual dignity. Love of 



' CLARENCE S. DARROW 173 

country and pride in her institutions are to be cultivated 
as the greatest safeguards of the repubhc and should 
be circumscribed by no sectional boundaries nor poisoned 
by any outburst of passion. 



THE HAYWOOD TRIAL: PLEA FOR THE 
DEFENSE 

CLARENCE S. DARROW 
Of the Chicago Bar 

(Extract from his closing address to the jury in the trial of Wil- 
liam Haj'^'ood as a conspirator in the assassination of Governor 
Frank Steimenberg, of Idaho, 1906. The trial attracted the atten- 
tion of the whole country.) 

The defendant in this case, WilHam D. Hay\\^ood, is 
charged with having killed the late Governor Steunen- 
berg. The murder was cold, deliberate, cowardly in the 
extreme, and if this man, sitting in his office in Denver, 
fifteen hundred ixdles away, employed this miserable 
assassin to come here and do this cow^ardly work, then, 
for God's sake, gentlemen, hang him by the neck until 
dead. He has fought many a fight — many a fight with 
the persecutors who are hounding him in this court. 
He has met them in many a battle in the open field, and 
he is not a coward. If he is to die, he will die as he has 
Hved, with his face to the foe. 

Gentlemen, w^hen you are through "vvith this trial and 
have gone back to your homes and think of it, pictures 
will come to you of the figures in this case, and amongst 



174 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the rest Harry Orchard's. It may not come to all of 
you aUke. One of you may picture Harry Orchard as 
he is meeting this drunken man reehng out of the saloon 
and shooting him to death in the darkness of the night. 
Another man may picture him as he places the fagot 
under Neville's saloon and runs away. Another may 
picture him as he plants a box of powder under the station 
and hurries off in the darkness to save his life, while 
he sends fourteen souls unshriven into the great beyond. 
Another may picture him placing a bomb at Steunen- 
berg's gate. Hawley will picture him as a cherubim with 
wings growing out from his shoulders and with a halo 
just above his head and singing songs, with a lawyer on 
one side of him and McPartland on the other. I don't 
know yet how Borah will picture him, but everybody 
will picture him according to how they see him. You 
have seen him here. You have heard his story. You 
have seen him, sleek and fat and well fed, facing this 
jury day by day, asking for this man's blood. Do you 
ever want to see him again ? Is there any man that can 
ever think of Harry Orchard — any man but Hawley — 
is there any sane man, I will say, who can ever think 
of Harry Orchard except in loathing and disgust? And 
yet, gentlemen, upon the testimony of this brute, this 
man who would assassinate his own nine-year-old girl 
with a dagger a thousand times more malicious and 
deadly than one that kills, upon his testimony you are 
asked to get rid of Bill Haywood. For what? Does 
anybody else attack his name ? Anybody else swear any- 
thing against him? Has any other voice been raised 
to accuse him ? Gh, no. You are asked to take his life 
because down in Colorado and up in the Coeur d'Alenes 



CLARENCE S. DARROW 175 

he has been against the Mine Owners' Association, and 
because he has been organizing the weak, the poor, the 
toilers; and for that reason he has raised up against him 
the power of this body of men, and you are asked to 
kill Bill Haywood. 

I have known Haywood — I have known him well and 
I believe in him. God knows it would be a sore day to 
me if he should go upon the scaffold. The sun would not 
shine or the birds would not sing on that day — for me. 
I would think of him, I would think of his wife, of his 
mother, I would think of his children, I would think of 
the great cause that he represents. It would be a sore 
day for me, but, gentlemen, he and his mother, and his 
wife and his children, are not my chief concern in this 
great case. It is not for them I plead. Other men have 
died in the same cause in which Will Haywood has risked 
his Hfe. He can die if this jury decrees it; but, oh, gentle- 
men, do not think for a moment that if you hang him 
you will crucify the labor movement of the world; do 
not think that you will kill the hopes and the aspirations 
and the desires of the weak and poor. 

Gentlemen, it is not for William Hayivood alone that 
I speak. I speak for the poor, for the weak, for the 
weary, for that long Hne of men who, in darkness and 
despair, have borne the labors of the human race. The 
eyes of the world are upon you — upon you twelve men 
of Idaho to-night. Wherever the English language is 
spoken or wherever any tongue makes known the thoughts 
of men in any portion of the civilized world, men are 
talking and wondering and dreaming about the verdict 
of these twelve men that I see before me now. If 
you kill him your act will be applauded by many. If you 



176 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

should decree Bill Haywood's death, in the railroad 
offices of our great cities men will applaud your names. 
If you decree his death, amongst the spiders of Wall 
Street will go up paeans of praise for these twelve good 
men and true. In every bank in the world, where men 
hate Haywood because he fights for the poor and against 
that accursed system upon which the favored live and 
grow rich and fat — from all those you will receive bless- 
ings and unstinted praise. 

But if your verdict should be "not guilty" in this 
case, there are still those who will reverently bow their 
heads and thank these twelve men for the Ufe and repu- 
tation you have saved. Out on our broad prairies where 
men toil with their hands, out on the wide ocean where 
men are tossed and buffeted on the waves, through our 
mills and factories, and down deep under the earth, 
thousands of men, and of women and children — men 
who labor, men who suffer, women and children weary 
with care and toil — these men and these women and 
these children will kneel to-night and ask their God to 
guide your hearts — these men and these women and 
these little children, the poor, the weak, and the suffering 
of the world, are stretching out their helpless hands to 
this jury in mute appeal for Will Haywood's life. 



WILLIAM E. BORAH 177 

THE HAYWOOD TRIAL: PLEA FOR THE 
PROSECUTION 

WILLIAM E. BORAH 

United States Senator from Idaho 

(The concluding part of his speech to the jury in the trial of 
William Haywood for the murder of Governor Steunenburg.) 

I HAVE read Dan ton's harangue to the mob in the 
streets of Paris; I have all but heard the silvery tones 
of Desmoulins in the Jacobin clubs, where organized 
assassins toyed with the lives of men; I can see Robes- 
pierre, now drunk with his fellows' blood, staggering 
back against the pillars of the assembly hall as retribu- 
tion raised its cold hand to lead him forth to death, 
but never have I heard or read so frightful an attack upon 
all those things for which the saints of justice have suffered 
martyrdom as I have heard in this court-room. 

I have no doubt that many times during this trial you 
have been much moved by the eloquence of counsel for 
the defense. They are men of wondrous powers. They 
have been brought here because so rarely gifted in power 
to sway the minds of men. It was their part in loyalty 
to their clients to toy with your sympathies, to call you, 
if possible, from the plain path of justice and duty; to 
lead you, if possible, from the brave and manly considera- 
tion of the real facts of this case. But as I listened to the 
music of their voices and felt for a moment the compel- 
ling touch of their hypnotic influence, there came back 
to me all the more vividly, when released from the spell, 
another scene — there came to me in more moving 



1 78 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

tones other voices. I remembered again the awful night 
of December 30, 1905, a night wliich added ten years to 
the Ufe of some who are in tliis court-room now. I felt 
again its cold and merciless chill, faced the drifting snow 
and peered at last into the darkness for the sacred spot 
where last lay my dead friend, and saw true, only too 
true, the stain of his life-blood upon the whited earth. 
I saw men and women standing about in storm and dark- 
ness, silent in the presence of the dreadful mystery, and 
Idaho disgraced and dishonored — I saw murder — no, 
not murder — a thousand times worse than murder, I 
saw anarchy displaying its first bloody triumph to Idaho. 
I saw government by assassination pointing to the mangled 
form of Frank Steunenberg, the broken family, the blood 
bespattered home, and saying to all — look, look, and 
take notice! Here is the fate of all who do their duty 
to their state and the Government. As I thought over 
that night again I said to myself, Thou Uving God, can 
time or the arts of counsel unteach the lessons of that 
hour? No, no; for the sake of all that good men hold 
near and dear, let us not be misled, let us not forget, 
let us not be falterers in this great test of courage and 
heroism. 

Counsel for the defense have tried to make you beheve 
that we would have professional distinction at the cost 
of human hberty or life. There has been something in 
this cause to make a man forget all professional pride. 
I only want what you want — murder stopped in 
Idaho. I only want what you want — human Hfe 
made safe — assassination put out of business. I only 
want what you want — the gate wliich leads to our homes, 
the yard gate whose inward swing tells of the returning 



WILLL\M E. BORAH 179 

husband and father, shielded and guarded by the courage 
and manhood of Idaho juries. 

But they say it is a solemn thing to take life. True, 
very true. But the fearless performance of duty by 
courts and juries protects society and prevents the spread 
of murder and anarchy. In the older days, when man 
walked closer to jiis God and heard more clearly the 
admonitions of the moral teachings under which we must 
thrive or perish, it was said, "By man's blood shaU 
man's blood be shed." He who takes life in the mahce 
of the heart forfeits his right to Uve — for the sake of 
society, for the sake of aU men who love their feUowmen 
and want to Hve with them in peace — he forfeits his 
right to Hve. It has been so from the beginning, so by 
the sanction of Him who provides aU things for the good 
of the children of men. 

If this be true where indi^ddual man slays but another, 
ten thousand times more true should it be where men in 
hatred and mahce, in stealth and in secrecy, combine, 
confederate, and agree to carry on and commit indiscrim- 
inate murder, where men defy law, denounce society, 
trample upon all rights, human and divine, and thirst 
for the blood of all who chance to thw^art or oppose their 
criminal purposes. Anarchy, pale, bloodless, restless, 
hungry demon from the crypts of heU — fighting for a 
foothold in Idaho! WTiat shall we do? This is the ques- 
tion. Shall we crush it, shall we make it unsafe for the 
disciples of this creed to do business here, or shall we palter 
and trim and compromise and invite it to choose other \^c- 
tims? These are the questions to be settled by you and 
you alone. In the court of your otvh conscience the ver- 
dict must be worked out, and I must leave it all \^dth you. 



l8o AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



DAMAGE SUITS AND THE LAW 

WILLIAM S. COWHERD 

Formerly a Congressman from Missouri 

(Extract from an address at a banquet of the Kansas City Bar 
Association, February 22, 1909.) 

The development of the common law has failed to 
keep pace with the development of industrial organiza- 
tion. In 1837 Lord Abinger decided that the butcher 
boy's helper could not recover for the butcher boy's 
neghgence, and thus fastened the fellow-servant doctrine 
on the law of England. 

But what justice can there be in such a rule appKed to 
the five thousand employees who to-morrow morning are 
passing through the gates of one of our great packing- 
houses ? It may have once been true, though I fear it 
was never more than legal fiction, that the man entering 
upon hazardous employment contracted for increased 
compensation and rightfully assumed the dangers that 
he faced. But we know this is not true to-day. Laws 
compelHng factory and mine inspection, laws regulating 
safety apphances and a whole brood of sanitary regula- 
tions attest the humane policy of modern times, which 
recognize it to be the duty of the law to protect those 
who either are too weak or too careless to protect them- 
selves. We recognize that man must labor if children 
would eat, and the work of society must be done. Are 
we to say to the brakeman who during last week's storm 
attempted to find precarious footing on the narrow, 
sleet-covered plankway on top of a swaying car, and 



WILLIAM S. COWHERD i8l 

slipping fell beneath its wheels, that he had assumed the 
risk and cannot recover for the injury? If so, we may 
rest assured he will find some defect in the plankway 
that will let him to the jury and the jury will decide 
regardless of the weight of the evidence that the injured 
man should be compensated for the loss he has sustained. 
If capital has made its investment under the promise 
that this loss was one it would not have to bear, it is 
unjust that society should settle these burdens back 
upon it. The community ought to bear the loss by 
permitting the investor to add it to the cost of doing 
business. 

Business can prosper under any fixed and certain 
charge; it never prospers long when yoked with the 
gambler and the speculator. The burdens entailed by 
accidents in industry and transportation should con- 
stitute an item of the cost of production or operation 
and be borne by the entire community. Twenty-five 
years ago Germany, recognizing the justice of this policy 
and the necessity of giving compensation to men injured 
in industrial pursuits, regardless of technical defenses, 
estabHshed a system of compulsory insurance. Every 
workman earning a certain amount per annum must be 
insured against injury, the compensation being measured 
by the wages he is receiving. Under this law twelve of 
the fifteen milHon wage-earners in Germany are to-day 
insured, the employer bearing one-third, the workman 
two-thirds of the cost of insurance. With the risk reduced 
thus to a fixed basis, the wage schedule of the workman 
can be adjusted to meet the charge and the employer 
can add the cost of insurance to the price of the article 
produced and in the end the burden is distributed over 



l82 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the entire community. Practically every country in 
Europe has followed this plan; in France, Italy, Austria- 
Hungary, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 
Holland, and Finland similar laws are in force. 

Gentlemen of the Bar, we are the guardians of the law. 
If it be unjust or inefficient ours is the blame. Lawyers 
control every legislature in the land and dominate the 
Federal Congress. In most law-making bodies of this 
country they constitute a majority of the membership 
and in all, by reason of abihty, experience, and training, 
they are rehed upon for leadership. Recent years have 
shown remarkable development in every Hne of industry 
and every profession. The investor has been busy and 
the scientist has accompHshed the impossible. The 
public expects and has a right to expect that the develop- 
ment of the law will keep step with the progress of the 
country. On your shoulders rests this burden. Oppor- 
tunity beckons us and society demands that we right 
the wrongs labor now endures and make business certain 
of the profit to which it is entitled. 



THE LAWYER IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

FREDERICK W. LEHMANN 
President of the American Bar Association 

(Extract from an address before the Nebraska State Bar Asso- 
ciation, at Omaha, Nebraska, November 23, 1906.) 

This is a land of law and of lawyers. And too many 
of both is the general, if not universal, comment. Still 



FREDERICK W. LEHMANN 183 

the laws increase and the lawyers multiply. The pro- 
fession here has a larger muster-roll than anywhere else 
in the world, and however much it may be disparaged 
in word, nowhere else has it been so much favored in 
deed. 

Peter the Great, during his stay in England, went into 
Westminster Hall and inquired who were the men in 
black robes doing so much talking. Being answered that 
they were lawyers, he rephed, "I have two in my empire, 
and when I return home I wWl hang one of them." Singu- 
lar moderation on his part, for under his riile there was 
no occasion for even one \a,wyeT. 

Jack Cade, in his scheme of leveling and Hcense, was 
more consistent and more thorough. "The first thing 
we do, let's kill all the lawyers." 

Alike in the autocratic and in the communistic scheme 
of society, the la^vyer has no place. As the institutions 
of a country become representative, as man in his indi- 
vidual capacity meets with regard, the la-wyer becomes 
important. He is the apostle of individuahsm and 
flourishes only under liberty regulated by law. 

Call the roll of our great leaders in House or Senate, 
and almost without exception they have been lawyers 
or students of law. There are Randolph, Calhoun, Clay, 
Webster, Benton, Douglas, and Seward. Lawyers are 
conspicuous in the Kst of governors of all the states. 
They are in the Cabinets of the Presidents, not simply 
as attorneys-general, but as holding every portfolio. 
They are our ministers abroad. They have negotiated 
nearly all our treaties and accomplished all our peaceful 
acquisitions of territory. In the Missouri Compromise, 
the repeal of that Compromise, questions of internal 



1 84 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

improvement, controversies over the institution of 
slavery, they occupied the commanding positions upon 
both sides. With one exception, every President of the 
United States has come to the office from the battle-field 
or from the court-room — with one exception they have 
been lawyers, or soldiers, or both, and of the twenty-five 
incumbents, nineteen have been lawyers. 

Whether lawyers will continue to hold high office in 
the measure of the past matters not, but it matters 
everything for them and for the country that they remain 
true to their traditions as helpers and leaders in every 
pubHc cause. That they may do this, they must have 
the confidence and esteem of their fellowmen, as Ham- 
ilton and Jefferson, Webster and Calhoun, Lincoln and 
Douglas had them. They must maintain the old stand- 
ards and ideals, putting achievement above emolument, 
a good fight before a great fee, and keep unsold and un- 
hired their manhood and their citizenship. In the pubHc 
work of the future there is a place for every member of 
the profession; for the speciaHst and the corporation 
lawyer, as well as the rest; but always, as in the past, 
in the front rank will be the man of all-round attain- 
ments and all-round experience, the model of the American 
statesman — the country lawyer — for his day is not 
past, nor in a free country ever will be. He will live 

"For the cause that needs assistance, 
For the wrongs that lack resistance, 
For the future in the distance, 
For the good that he can do." 



HIRAM M. GARWOOD 185 



UNANIMITY IN VERDICTS OF JURIES 

HIRAM M. GARWOOD 
Of the Houston, Texas, Bar 

(Extract from an address, before a committee of the Texas State 
Senate, on a bill abolishing the requirement of unanimity in ver- 
dicts of juries, 1908.) 

In an address delivered before the American Bar 
Association in 1898, Mr. Choate chose for his theme, 
"The Jury System." It was a memorable oration, made 
by one worthy to wear the mantle of Thomas Erskine, 
and of his own great kinsman, Rufus Choate. Referring 
in terms of eloquent pathos to his own increasing years, 
he said that he wished to deHver it to the American Bar 
as liis last message that they should preserve inviolate 
the jury system in its purity, and with a wealth of his- 
toric allusion and a conclusiveness of logic estabHshed the 
fact that the requirement for unanimity in the verdict 
was the surest way of ascertaining the truth and was the 
greatest safeguard of personal and property rights that 
could be devised. Among other things, he stated that 
the number of mistrials by disagreement of juries was 
inconsiderable, and that, from the information which 
he had acquired, throughout the United States it would 
not amount to more than three and one half to four 
per cent of the total trials, and that, eliminating those 
cases where more than three jurors prevented a verdict, 
the number of mistrials would amount scarcely to one 
per cent of the total. 

The end of judicial investigation, as so well expressed 



l86 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

by Judge Pleasants, is not merely expedition; it is not 
merely economy, but it is the complete establishment of 
truth and the vindication of the right. The philosophy 
of the jury lies absolutely in the requirement for una- 
nimity. The verdict in such a case is not a nameless and 
a nondescript thing; it is the product of every man upon 
it. Knowing that the verdict is dependent absolutely 
upon the conclusions of his own intellect, each man 
measures up to the full responsibility of the occasion; 
that responsibihty he can shift to no other. This pro- 
duces an independence of thought and a conservatism 
of deliberation which makes mightily for the truth. 

With the glorious history of the common law behind 
us; with the fact that every great and signal declaration 
made by any EngHsh-speaking people, from Magna 
Charta to the Declaration of Texas Independence, in 
its favor; with the experience of ninety-nine per cent 
of the great English-speaking judges; with the enthusi- 
astic testimony to the efficacy of the unanimous verdict 
of twelve men of almost every great advocate at the 
English and American Bar, from Thomas Erskine to 
Jeremiah Black, and from Black to Joseph H. Choate; 
with the encomiums of the greatest statesmen from 
Edmund Burke and Charles Fox to Jefferson and Calhoun, 
are we not justified in saying with the great Chief Justice 
Roger B. Taney that "Our liberties are clearly bound 
up with the preservation in full force and usefulness of 
the great principles of the common law and of trial by 
jury." 

And with Judge Dillon, who, in his "Laws and Juris- 
prudence of England and America," says: "I protest 
against the continentalization of our law. I invoke the 



DELPHIN M. DELMAS 187 

conservative judgment of the profession against the 
iconoclast who in the name of reform comes to destroy 
the jury; against the rash surgery which holds not a 
cautery to cure, but a knife to amputate. Twelve good 
and lawful men are better judges of disputed facts than 
twelve learned judges." 

And, finally, with the great teacher of the common 
law, Blackstone, that the system of jury trial, as it has 
been handed down to us from the fathers, is "the pal- 
ladium of British hberty, the glory of the EngHsh law, 
and the most transcendent privilege which any subject 
can enjoy or wish for." 



TRIAL BY JURY 

DELPHIN M. DELMAS 
Formerly of the San Francisco Bar; now of New York City 

(From an address before the Bar Association, at Kansas City, 
Missouri.) 

As it is the most ancient, trial by jury has been the 
most enduring of all the pohtical and judicial institutions 
which have flourished among the EngHsh-speaking 
peoples. Coeval with the earliest dawn of organized 
society in Britain, its origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. 
Though in a crude and rudimentary form, it had existed 
for centuries when the Norman invader set his foot 
upon EngHsh soil, and it survived the general wreck of 
English laws and customs which followed in the wake of 
his conquering footsteps. The hand of time, beneath 



l88 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

which all other institutions underwent alteration or 
decay, left it untouched. The march of ages, which 
swept away other great achievements of human polity, 
but served to confirm it. The wars and revolutions, 
which uprooted weaker growths, but strengthened the 
hold which it had upon the EngHsh earth, and inured 
its trunk to defy still mightier storms. In the long 
unfolding of centuries, it saw kingly houses, founded in 
the confident hope of perpetual succession, rise, flourish, 
and vanish, leaving no trace behind; it saw the Tudor 
dynasty overthrow the Plantagenet, the Stuart succeed 
the Tudor, the Hanoverian supplant the Stuart; it saw 
the feudal system crumble into dust, and upon its ruins 
rise the structure of modern society; it saw the crown 
of spiritual supremacy pass from the head of the Pope 
of Rome to the head of the Monarch of England; it saw 
the scepter of empire and of rule, fallen from the nerveless 
grasp of the nobility, snatched up and gripped by the 
strong hand of the Commons in Parliament assembled; 
it saw the kingly ofl&ce decUne from the rank which gave 
it once a voice potential in the affairs of the state, to 
become an empty dignity, best fitted to grace a social 
function, or adorn a public show; it saw the material 
wealth of the realm transferred from the baronial halls 
of the landed aristocracy to the counting-houses of mer- 
chants, money-changers, and bankers in Leadenhall and 
Lombard Street; it saw the whole frame of legal pro- 
cedure recast and remolded, antique forms grown hoary 
with age abandoned, the Constitution and the name of 
the courts consecrated by the lapse of centuries funda- 
mentally altered, and the whole fabric of the judicial 
hierarchy rebuilt from turret to foundation-stone — all 



PRESLEY K. EWING 189 

this it saw, and, amid the universal wreck of things which 
seemed endowed with enduring hfe, it alone, defying 
time and change, stands as it stood in the years when 
Edward the Confessor sat upon the throne of England. 

As no other institution ever struck its roots so deep 
into the hearts of the Enghsh-speaking races, so to none 
have they clung with equal tenacity. As long as the 
people continue to govern themselves, so long shall it 
endure among them. Its decay will mark the decadence, 
and its overthrow the end of popular Hberty. The right 
of the people to administer their own justice is as indis- 
pensable to the practise and to the perpetuation of self- 
government as is their right to make their own laws. 



THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW 

PRESLEY K. EWING 
Of the Houston, Texas, Bar 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the Texas State 
Bar Association.) 

The aristocracy of American brains is now, and ever 
has been in the history of our nation, the American Bar. 
Plumed on the priceless ideals of the repubHc, impressed 
in her inspiring institutions, imprinted on her prevaiHng 
policies, written into her imperishable principles, and 
linked with the very Hfe of her laws, is the influence of 
the American lawyer. 

Not, however, on this continent alone, but in every 
cHme where civilization has carried forward the immortal 



igo AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

principle of liberty, the voice of the lawyer, above the 
din and tumult of retarding influences, has been heard 
in tones of thunder to "ring out the false, ring in the 
true." Now it is Erskine, with the impassioned fire of 
his resistless eloquence, grappHng constructive treason 
and strangling unto death which will never know a resur- 
rection morn. Again, it is Labori, with a purpose noth- 
ing could appal, tearing the mask of miHtary despotism 
from the imprisonment of Dreyfus, and mingling truth 
and justice with the eagles of France. Illustrations 
might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but it is enough 
if we hearken to their message and warning. Upon us 
of this generation is the responsibility of seeing that the 
matchless monuments of our predecessors shall not with 
dishonor be defaced. 

The rule of the profession, whatever may be the excep- 
tion, is duty rather than success, integrity of character 
and life, love of truth and right, respect if not reverence 
for authority, human and divine, and abundant charity 
for the frailties of man. These are the shining glory of 
the profession, bench, and Bar. And if these principles 
are sometimes obscured by excessive zeal and emula- 
tion, ever and anon they will, like the sun shadowed 
by a passing cloud, return to their original splendor. 

Under this high ideal and within its bounds, the fidehty 
of our profession has been, through all its notable history, 
a light and landmark on the cUffs of the world's devotion. 
As has been well said, "Kings might envy it and patriots 
imitate." No flattering can beguile, no temptation of 
reward allure, no spectacle of terror turn away the noble 
lawyer from his client's side. When once launched upon 
the sea of strife, whether borne aloft upon the rolHng 



GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY 191 

billows of the popular tide or dashed with fury against 
the sands, he stands ahke firm and erect, never wavering 
in his loyalty, never faltering in his faith, an adherent 
who will not desert and cannot betray. 

Young men — those of you just about entering the 
profession — I say to you, the Bar is not a communion 
of saints, and it often needs a forgiveness of sins. But 
ever, above and beyond its fools to be pitied and its 
knaves to be deplored, is an escutcheon, spotless and 
stainless. To your hands it will soon be committed. 
Bear it above the marshes of commercialism and greed, 
raise it to the heights of patriotism and truth, consecrate it 
to law and order, enshrine it to human liberty, and finally 
plant it on the turrets of its traditions, where the stars may 
gleam and ghtter over it as it proclaims God's foremost 
attribute on earth. Justice — untarnished and unsulHed, 
for which "all place, a temple, and all season, summer." 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE LAWYER 

GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY 
Dean of the School of Law of Columbia University 

(From an address delivered upon the occasion of the celebration 
of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the foimding of the University 
of Cincinnati.) 

Our American notion that everybody needs a little 
education, and nobody more than a little, has much to 
answer for, but nowhere has it been more disastrous or 
grotesque than in equipping the lawyer. 



192 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

It is a curious theory, hard to displace in the dead level 
of a democracy, that every man, whatever his training, 
is equally fitted for the highest and most technical service 
the state can demand, and all that is necessary to trans- 
mute the poUtician into the statesman is a popular 
vote, or to transmute the citizen into the jurist. This 
democratic faith has been reenforced by two other miscon- 
ceptions. One is the popular view that a lawyer's voca- 
tion is primarily a private one, and that the sum of his 
duties is fideHty to his chent, and the other, that curiously 
persistent tradition of the common law, that the citizen 
invested with judicial office has at his command an unfail- 
ing and infallible source of legal wisdom. We find it 
hard to emancipate ourselves from the notion that the 
judge pronounces judgment according to law. I do not 
mean that is the usual attitude of the lawyer, but it is 
the attitude of the community. 

Now, as is the lawyer, so is the court, and so is the ad- 
ministration of justice. As is the lawyer, so is the law. 
Then, shall we submit to a condition of affairs under 
which the law dispensed from our courts is, as it has 
too often been, the result of purely empirical training, 
or, in many cases, of no training at all? Shall Wisdom 
sit enthroned in the judgment seat and the voice of 
Wisdom be heard in the judgments of the courts? We 
hear much of the decUning reverence for law, and lament 
the growing lack of respect for the administration of 
justice. Perhaps we have a little exaggerated these senti- 
ments, but in the troublous times to come a government 
of laws and not of men cannot stand unless it be bulwarked 
on every hand by popular faith in the laws and respect 
for their administration. And how is this faith to be 



GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY 193 

restored or maintained? By investing our judges with 
judicial robes, or by educating them and our bar so that 
we shall have real justice in the seat of justice? 

One word more. I am the guest of the University of 
Cincinnati — a city university, the only one, I beheve, 
in this coimtry, if not in the -world. It is a high distinc- 
tion. We hear much criticism in these days, as we have 
heard ever since higher education came to be supported 
by pubHc taxation, of maintaining colleges, and even 
high schools, out of the pubHc fund. Let me say that, 
if the state were to-day to make a beginning of pubHc 
education, it should be made with the imiversity and 
professional schools rather than with the elementary. 
For what is needed in a democracy is not that every 
man, woman, and child should be quahfied to read the 
yellow journals, but that leaders should be made, and 
leadership comes only out of training, and particularly 
of the training our colleges and universities and pro- 
fessional schools furnish. 

BeHeve me, gentlemen, the paramount interest of the 
American people to-day is not irrigation, nor the con- 
servation of forest domains, nor the Panama Canal, 
nor a great navy, but the proper training of the profes- 
sion to which has been committed the high function of 
the administration of justice in the state. I venture to 
predict that the time is coming, and is not far distant, 
when in this country, as now on the continent, the fact 
will be recognized that the administration of justice is 
an affair of the state. Is this a counsel of perfection ? 
If so, then I have come to the proper place with it. Where 
are counsels of perfection to be nourished if not in our 
universities? Oxford has been called, as with reproach, 



194 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

"the home of lost causes." Is it a reproach for a great 
university to be the home of lost causes? Does it not 
depend on whether the causes deserve to be lost ? Will 
you measure the success or influence of a university with 
your commercial tape lines ? What is it that makes the 
university great ? Numbers ? Buildings ? Endowments ? 
Or is it the causes for which it stands? The ideals it 
represents? The standards of pubHc service which she 
holds aloft? 



ATTORNEY AND CLIENT 

F. CHARLES HUME, JR. 
Of the Houston, Texas, Bar 

(Extracts from an after-dinner speech delivered at the banquet 
of the American Bar Association, Seattle, Washington, August 28, 
1908.) 

There subsists in the knowledge of men no more 
delightful relation than that of attorney and cKent. 
And there is none, in my experience — save matrimony 
— more difficult of estabHshment. 

Throughout the law the one increasing purpose runs, 
to lead to justice. And to our profession is entrusted 
the commission to control, according to law, the tide of 
human affairs, to preserve the legal status of men, to 
hearken to "the still sad music of humanity," to voice 
the spirit of truth, and silence falsehood, enforcing right, 
redressing wrong, fearing God and no man. 

The fault is not in our profession, but in ourselves, if 



F. CHARLES HUME, JR. 195 

we be underlings. The attorney is more or vastly less. His 
title imports integrity and conscientious fidelity. Within 
the terms alone of honorable professional engagement he 
represents and stands for the cHent's interest. But he is 
not the cHent, not even his own cHent — except in cases 
more to be pitied than cited. Nor is he the keeper of the 
client's general conscience, nor his guardian at large, nor 
his hireHng, nor the impresario of his social aspirations. 

Though cHents come and cHents go, in turgid or in 
rippling flow, and pass your open door forever — be 
comforted; for the hand of little em^ployment hath the 
daintier sense. Let the temper of thy days be philosophy, 
and never lose it. Take what comes and does not come 
■^dth equal fortitude, in full accord and satisfaction; for 
contentment is better than riches — when you cannot 
have riches. 

Under all circumstances, keep pure and warm your 
ideals. Don't get refrigerated. And in the end your 
supreme success may be character; for merit tells — too 
oft, alas, in our profession, a hard luck story. Yet — 

"Though gold now fail us, friends bewail us, 
Adverse fate be ours, and fame's delay; 
Though courts deny us, landlords try us, 
Yet, to surcease, love will find the way." 

And through its tender ministrations, those of us that 
now but thunder in the professional index may flash — 
or even strike — conspicuous yet in the table of contents. 

Love of home vd\l keep us steadfast. Love of country 
will inspire us to defend it 'gainst aU perfls — to destroy, 
if need shall come, the menace of ''swollen fortimes" in 
the hand of predatory wealth — even at the hazard of 
making them our own! 



196 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Love of woman will sustain us, keep us thinking, keep 
us busy, and will urge us to abate the nuisance of small 
fees. And love of law, with grim devotion, will serve 
to keep us moving — not, peradventure, from place to 
place, unwilling and perplexed, but in some congenial 
spot well chosen — ever upward to Olympian heights of 
nectarine renown, and ever inward to the central peace 
of many cHents, subsisting at the heart of endless litiga- 
tion — the profession's unspoke hope, the harmony of 
the world — which the higher civilization, that we may 
have and hold a local habitation and a name, cannot 
suffer to perish from the earth, and which the friends that 
prize us must not wilHngly let die. 



THE ''GIVEN-UP" MAN 

MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH 
Of the Volunteers of America 

(Extract from an address in "Little Mother Stories," published 
by the Volunteer Prison League.) 

When we look out over the lives of those whose souls 
have been soiled, whose talents and very manhood have 
been prostituted to evil, whose hopes and chances in 
life are bUghted, we are prone to be hopeless concerning 
their future. If the shadow of prison walls is around 
them, and the stigma of detected crime has blackened 
their name and character, the world says of them, "That 
man is done for; he has thrown away his chances; he will 
never make anything of life after this." If he be one 



MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH 197 

who has Hved long in crime, who has been especially 
reckless, hardened and desperate in character, one for 
whom no one has a good word and who has been but a 
denizen of the imder-world, then the world will indeed 
say that the case is hopeless, that efforts would be wasted 
in trying to touch the hardened heart or seeking to kindle 
the star of hope in the dark night that has closed in 
around the "given-up" man's miserable wreck of a life. 
Fortunately, the world's harsh judgment is often hasty, 
and based more on what is seen of the difficulties of a 
situation than upon the possibihties that underlie the 
surface. ' I'-- ^ 

There is an old saying that is often glibly passed from 
lip to hp and uttered even by good people, who would 
feel deeply incensed if charged mth falsehood, and yet 
it is cruelly, wickedly false, "Once a thief, always a thief; 
once a convict, always a convict." When first I under- 
took to study the questions that involve the present and 
future welfare of our country's prisoners, this fallacy 
was quoted to me by those who said that I was entering 
a field where only bitter disappointment and failure 
awaited me, and that those who had upon them the 
taint of crime were beyond hope. Then it was that my 
heart gloried in the fact that those of us who go as mes- 
sengers of the great King of love and mercy can view 
the poor, sin-stained, self-wrecked Hves of men from His 
standpoint, and not from that of the world. Beneath 
the very evident failure and wrong, we may look deep 
down in the poor, hopeless heart for the bud of promise 
that, all unknown to themselves, may yet be awaiting 
the touch of a higher, stronger power than any that has 
yet reached them. I believed when I first went to a 



198 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

prison, and I believe a hundredfold more intensely now, 
that in every human heart there is something to reach, 
and that there is an Influence above that will step in 
where human love and work and effort could not avail 
to bring about much-needed awakening and unfold a 
revelation of future possibility. Yes, thank Gk)d, there 
is a sunshine that can force its way through prison bars 
and work wondrous and unexpected miracles, bringing 
forth beauty of life, earnestness of purpose, and a genuine 
change of heart where such results seemed the most 
utterly unlikely and impossible. 



THE BROTHERHOOD AND HOME MISSIONS 

WILLIAM RADER 
Pastor of the Calvary Presbyterian Church of San Francisco 

(From a speech delivered at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, before the 
third convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America, 
February 24, 1909.) 

There have been four noticeable conquests of America. 
The first was that of the pioneer who crossed the con- 
tinent when there was no bridge over the river, no track 
through the desert, no path through the forest. He 
made conquests of the Indian and the forest and the 
desert, and laid the foundations of this great repubhc. 
He was not alone, however, in his pioneer conquests of 
physical America. Side by side with him was a great 
figure in early American life known to the church and 
history as the home-missionary preacher. He carried 



WILLIAM RADER 199 

his library in his saddlebags and his creed Hke a flame of 
fire in his heart. The home-missionary preacher, riding 
across the frontier, swimming river and stream, and 
threading his way across the trackless desert, is a power- 
ful character in the early life of America. It was he 
who opened the Middle West, as the history of Clark 
and Lewis will bear witness; it was he who saved the 
great Northwest, and particularly Oregon, to this coun- 
try, as the name of Marcus Whitman testifies. Daniel 
Webster is reported to have said that he would not give 
a dollar for the whole Northwest, but Daniel Webster 
was mistaken. It was the home missionary who opened 
the Golden Gate of California, and mth his flag and 
Bible laid the foundations of the empire of the Pacific. 
It was in 1852 that Seward declared that the Pacific 
region would one day be the theater of the world's great- 
est events. That prophecy has already come true, for 
the world events of the immediate future are even now 
transpiring in that Pacific theater. Once it was three 
thousand miles from New York to San Francisco. Now 
it is three thousand miles from San Francisco to New 
York. Once the New York Harbor was the front door 
of the republic and the Golden Gate was the back yard, 
but now the front gate is by the city of San Francisco, 
and the future of our race will very largely be solved in 
the events which are to transpire, and even now are 
transpiring, in the great Pacific region. 

The second conquest was by the soldier who fought 
the battles of the nation, the Revolution and the Rebel- 
lion. You remember that minuteman who stands in his 
spotless marble at Concord, and the words of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson: 



20O AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard roimd the world. 

He made the second conquest of our country. 

The third was made by the busmess man who inaugu- 
rated the great commercial and business era of our people. 
He built bridges and railways, digged canals, constructed 
cities, and shaped the business destinies of the people. 

The next conquest, and that with which we are now 
engaged, is that of the Christian men. The most signifi- 
cant sign of the times is the organized revolt of Christian 
men against the prevailing materiahsm of our day. This 
is one of the assurances, gentlemen, that the kingdom 
of God is surely coming. Weary of the materiaHstic 
conditions of the past, the men of the pew as well as the 
men of the pulpit are organizing themselves and assaulting 
these conditions which have so vitiated our common 
American Hfe. In doing this they have followed the 
laws of nature. The stars cluster together, the great 
redwoods of the Sierras group themselves, the fishes of 
the sea swim in schools, the flowers congregate in radiant 
clusters of splendor. And is it not in harmony with 
this law that we men of this generation should fulfil the 
high commission of our Master and go into all the world 
and dispel all the evils of men? Thank God, we are 
beginning to work heart to heart, shoulder to shoulder, 
mind to mind, as one great unbroken army of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

I wish I could paint the home-missionary picture as 
I see it upon the canvas that involves this great con- 
tinent of ours, fringed on either side with the surf of the 



WASfflNGTON GARDNER 20i 

sea. I would crowd into that canvas over eighty mil- 
Hons of people, with their teeming cities. I would put 
there the ten millions of negroes, the two himdred and 
fifty thousand Indians who have been driven back to 
the reservations, the two millions of children at work, 
the sixty to seventy thousand children who go hungry 
to bed every night in New York, the two millions in 
the United States who are underfed, the vice in high 
places and low places, the saloon, the great streets filled 
with the unchurched masses and multitudes of souls 
going to their ruin, falling like a tree in the forest with 
far-resounding thunder. Oh, what a picture for the 
home-missionary enterprise of the church! Over it all 
I would put the canopy of our country's flag, that flag 
that was raised by our fathers and carried across these 
plains and through the Golden Gate and planted on the 
islands of the distant Pacific, that dear banner of our 
fathers! O men of America, "Arise, shine, for thy Hght 
is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." 



"IN GOD WE TRUST" 

WASHINGTON GARDNER 

Congressman from Michigan 

(Remarks made in the House of Representatives March i6, 
1908, the House having under consideration a bill providing for 
the restoration of the motto, "In God we Trust," on certain coins 
of the United States.) 

Mr. Speaker: In the recent successful efforts of the 
police of Chicago to ferret out the nesting places of anarchy 



202 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

in that city, it was found that in the Hterature from which 
their children were taught there was an avowed purpose 
to banish God from the minds of the rising generation. 
Sir, I want to put myself on record as against the purpose 
of the anarchists in this as in all other respects. 

The teaching influence and the rallying power of 
emblems and mottoes have been recognized in all ages 
and by all nations. As a rule they concrete in material 
form or express in briefest language some great thought 
or purpose or movement imtil they become dear to the 
people adopting them. The origin of these mottoes and 
emblems is often of greatest interest and lends endearing 
influence and value. 

The ignominious cross upon which was consummated 
the subHmest sacrifice in human history is to-day the 
emblem of hope to uonumbered millions of men in every 
quarter of the earth. The sacrificial wood upon which 
was pinioned the body of the Nazarene has been glorified 
by his followers, and the ^^In hoc signo vinces'^ moves in 
resistless march to the conquest of the world. 

The flag of our country is emblematical of all we hold 
dear in our national life. Floating as it does over the 
halls of legislation, over the garrisons of our soldiers, the 
battle-ships of our sailors, and the schoolhouses of our 
children, it is a constant reminder not only of a glorious 
past, but an inspiration to a still more glorious future, 
because it speaks the language of patriotic devotion and 
sacrifice to our common country. 

The motto, "In God we trust," had its origin during 
the Civil War. It is one of the heritages of that gigantic 
struggle between two sections of a great people reading 
the same Bible and praying to the same God. Happily 



NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 203 

now we are a reunited country, and the heart of the 
people still goes out to the God of nations as of individ- 
uals. We of the North join hands with you of the South 
and say your God is our God, as your people are our 
people. 

The fathers who founded this nation had faith in God. 
It ill becomes their sons to even appear to turn back the 
hand upon the dial plate of time. Were it a question 
de novo, it would present a different aspect. But we 
cannot now afford to have the childhood and youth of 
the nation infer, however erroneous that inference might 
be, that the Congress had repudiated the faith of the 
fathers or attempted to becloud that of their children. 



VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY 

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 
Pastor of Plymouth Church, New York City 

(Extract from a sermon preached November 21, 1909.) 

It is important for us to remember that the greatest 
events do not concern tools, foods, or battle-ships. There 
are forces beyond the power of the electric spark, and 
these energies are invisible. Niagara appeals to the eye, 
as the water falls down, but there is a power that lifts 
the sap into the forest, a power that raises bodily into 
the air a thousand thousand Niagaras, and that energy 
is unseen. The greatest forces in the world are spiritual 
ideas; ideas of God, duty, love, the cross, forgiveness, 
and immortality. These ideas enrich the intellect, 



204 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

deepen the affection, wing the imagination, fortify the 
will, and make great souls that afterward create great 
civiHzations. 

Of a truth the fulness of time seems to have come. The 
Chinese wall has fallen, the darkness has begun to lift 
from Africa, the night has passed for the South Sea 
Islands; we have the hospitals, the schools, the printing- 
presses; we have the evangel of the love of God to teach; 
we have the men and the women ready to go ; we have the 
money to send them. More progress is being made now 
in a single day than was formerly made in a year; more 
in a year than was formerly made in a century. Wise 
men will strike hands with God's providence and have 
a part in this, the greatest movement that is now on 
in the world. Only a few centers of Hght are needed, 
for the hght spreads. Only a Httle leaven is asked, for 
the leaven works. Two or three physicians and teachers 
for a million people; God and time and truth do the 
rest. Commerce follows the flag, but the flag follows the 
cross. It is fooHsh to say that com.merce, tools, and 
things will do the work. Of what use is a telescope to 
a Hottentot ? He cannot eat it. What does a chemical 
laboratory mean to an Eskimo ? There is not blubber in 
the retort. Manhood comes first. Make the hand 
strong and then there is something to hold the tool. 
The spring of all invention and science and industry is 
in the soul. The intellect is more than the books it 
writes; the imagination is more than the arts it produces; 
conscience comes first, then follow the codes and the 
constitution. Civilization is not spun out of iron 
threads; civihzation is a gold and purple cloth spun out 
of threads of intellect, heart, and conscience. Ashamed 



JOSEPH A. McCULLOUGH 205 

of Christianity? As soon be ashamed of the omnipo- 
tence of these sunbeams that create harvests in a fruit- 
ful land. 



SANITATION AND RELIGION 

JOSEPH A. McCULLOUGH 
Of the Greenville {S. C.) Bar 

(Extract from an address on "The Effect of Religious Concep- 
tions upon the Science and Practise of Medicine," dehvered before 
the graduating class of the Charleston Medical College, April 11, 
1906.) 

As a result of the triumph of sense and sanitation, the 
death rate has been wonderfully diminished everywhere, 
plagues and epidemics have about lost their terror, and 
it devolves upon the yoimg man of to-day to still further 
carry on the work of the fathers until germ and microbes 
shall acknowledge the hand of the master of science. 

In the American pulpit, preachers are preaching the 
gospel of soap and water, and deaths due to want of 
sanitary precautions are no longer dwelt upon in funeral 
sermons as results of national sin or as "inscrutable 
Providence," and both religious press and pulpit carry 
to every household just ideas of sanitary precautions and 
hygienic Hving. 

Examples like Lord Palmerston, refusing the request 
of the Scotch clergy that a fast-day be appointed to 
ward off cholera and advising them to go home and clean 
their streets, and that of the devout Wilham the Second, 
forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency on 



2o6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the ground that they led to neglect of practical human 
means of health, are in striking contrast to older methods, 
and the position even of the Scotch clergy is out of ha 
mony now with the best orthodox thought. 

In 1893 an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcop^ 
Church in Philadelphia refused to respond to the call of 
the bishop of Pennsylvania that special prayers be offered 
in order to ward off the cholera, declaring that to do so 
in the filthy condition of the streets then prevaiUng in 
Philadelphia would be blasphemous. Men have obtamed 
a saner conception of God and this sanity is manifesting 
itself in art, Hterature, and science. Instead of scien- 
tific investigations leading the world from God, they 
have brought God to the world. He is imminent in 
everything — in the physical world, in all history, 
and in reHgion. Even the sacred text must give way 
to Him, and its value is becoming more and more 
recognized as quahtative, and its saving power, the 
truth it contains. 

Thoughtful minds and devout spirits put their faith 
not in the text of the Scripture, but in the God the Scrip- 
tures reveal. Just as the telescope is useful only in sc 
far as it reveals the star, so the chief reHgious value oi 
the Scriptures is that they reveal God and reHgious truth, 
Men no longer worship the telescope, but the sun whict 
it reveals. They recognize in "natural law" the ordei 
or mode in which events are occasioned and not the 
cause or purpose of their occurrence. The world to-da> 
realizes more fully than ever before the existence of i 
supreme, self-conscious intelHgence which forever founds 
and administers the order of the world in all of its depart 
ments and movements. 



JAMES GIBBONS 207 

"Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 

Back of the flour the mill; 
Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower 

And the sun and the Father's will." 
rhis conception of God makes all truth divine, all 
/ holy, all history sacred, and all labor equal in His 
ht. When you apply God's remedies as found in 
ture to the cure of disease, you adopt the divine plan; 
i man who would deny their efficacy is the real atheist, 
d the man who doubts them the dangerous sceptic. 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

JAMES GIBBONS 
Roman Catholic Cardinal, of Baltimore, Maryland 

(Extract from an address dehvered before the Parliament of 
;Ugions, at Chicago, September 14, 1893-) 

The gospel of Christ as propounded by the Cathohc 
tiurch has brought not only Hght to the intellect, but 
.mfort also to the heart. It has given us "that peace 

God which surpasseth all understanding," the peace 
hich springs from the conscious possession of truth. 

has taught us how to enjoy that triple peace which 
)nstitutes true happiness, as far as it is attainable in 
lis life — peace with God by the observance of His 
)mmandments, peace with our neighbor by the exercise 
[ charity and justice toward him, and peace with our- 
ilves by repressing our inordinate appetites, and keep- 
ig our passions subject to the law of reason, and our 
eason illumined and controlled by the law of God. 



L 



2o8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

All other religious systems prior to the advent of 
Christ were national, like Judaism, or state religions, 
like Paganism. The CathoUc reUgion alone is world- 
wide and cosmopohtan, embracing all races and nations 
and peoples and tongues. 

The CathoUc Church has taught man the knowledge 
of God and of himself; she has brought comfort to his 
heart by instructing him to bear the ills of Ufe with 
Christian philosophy; she has sanctified the marriage 
bond; she has proclaimed the sanctity and inviolabiUty 
of human hfe from the moment that the body is ani- 
mated by the spark of life till it is extinguished; she 
has founded asylums for the training of children of both 
sexes, and for the support of the aged poor; she has estab- 
lished hospitals for the sick and homes for the redemption 
of fallen women; she has exerted her influence toward the 
mitigation and aboHtion of human slavery; she has been 
the unwavering friend of the sons of toil. These are 
some of the blessings which the CathoHc Church has 
conferred on society. 

I will not deny — on the contrary, I am happy to 
avow — that the various Christian bodies outside the 
CathoHc Church have been, and are to-day, zealous 
promoters of most of these works of Christian benevolence 
which I have enumerated. Not to speak of the innumer- 
able humanitarian houses estabhshed by our non-Cath- 
oHc brethren throughout the land, I bear cheerful testi- 
mony to the philanthropic institutions founded by Wilson, 
by Shepherd, by Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, and George 
Peabody, in the city of Baltimore. But will not our 
separated brethren have the candor to acknowledge that 
we had first possession of the field, that these beneficent 



JAMES GIBBONS 209 

movements have been inaugurated by us, and that the 
other Christian communities, in their noble efforts for 
the moral and social regeneration of mankind, have in 
no small measure been stimulated by the example and 
emulation of the ancient Church? 

Let us do all we can in our day and generation in the 
cause of humanity. Every man has a mission from God 
to help his fellow-beings. Though we differ in faith, 
thank God there is one platform on which we stand 
united, and that is the platform of charity and benevo- 
lence. We cannot, indeed, like our Divine Master, give 
sight to the bhnd, hearing to the deaf, speech to the 
dumb, and strength to the paralyzed Hmb, but we can 
work miracles of grace and mercy by reHeving the dis- 
tress of our suffering brethren. And never do we approach 
nearer to our Heavenly Father than when we alleviate the 
sorrows of others. Never do we perform an act more 
GodHke than when we bring sunshine to hearts that are 
dark and desolate. Never are we more like to God than 
when we cause the flowers of joy and of gladness to bloom 
in souls that were dry and barren before. "ReHgion," 
says the apostle, "pure and undefiled before God and 
the Father, is this: To visit the fatherless and widow in 
their tribulation, and to keep one's self unspotted from 
the world." Or, to borrow the words of pagan Cicero, 
"There is no way by which man can approach nearer to 
the gods than by contributing to the welfare of their 
fellow creatures." 



2IO AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE NEW RELIGION 

CHARLES W. ELIOT 
Former President of Harvard University 

(Extract from a discourse before the Harvard Summer School 
of Theology, 1909.) 

The new religion affords an indefinite scope or range 
for progress and development. It rejects all the limita- 
tions of family, tribal, or national religion. It is not 
bound to any dogma, creed, book, or institution. It has 
the whole world for the field of the loving labors of its 
disciples, and its fundamental precept of serviceableness 
admits an infinite variety and range in both times and 
space. It is very simple, and therefore possesses an 
important element of durability. It is the complicated 
things that get out of order. Its symbols will not relate 
to sacrifice or dogma, but it will doubtless have symbols 
which will represent its love of Hberty, truth, and beauty. 
It will also have social rites and reverent observances, 
for it will wish to commemorate the good thoughts and 
deeds which have come down from former generations. 

It will have its saints, but its canonizations will be 
based on grounds somewhat new. It will have its heroes, 
but they must have shown a loving, disinterested, or 
protective courage. It will have its communions, with 
the Great Spirit, with the spirits of the departed, and 
with living fellowmen of like minds. Working together 
will be one of its fundamental ideas — of men with God, 
of men with prophets, leaders, and teachers; of men with 
one another, of men's intelligence with the forces of 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 21 1 

nature. It will teach only such uses of authority as are 
necessary to secure the cooperation of several or many 
people to one end, and the discipline it will advocate 
will be training in the development of cooperative good- 
will. 

The new religion proposes as a basis of unity first, its 
doctrine of an immanent and loving God, and, secondly, 
by its precept: Be serviceable to fellowmen. Already 
there are many signs in the free countries of the world 
that different religious denominations can unite in good 
work to promote human welfare. The support of hos- 
pitals, dispensaries, and asylums by persons connected 
with all sorts of reUgious denominations in carrying on 
associated charities in large cities, the success of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, and the numerous 
efforts to form federations of kindred churches for prac- 
tical purposes, all testify to the feasibiHty of extensive 
cooperation in good works. Again, the new religion 
cannot create any caste, ecclesiastical class, or exclusive 
sect, founded on a rite. On these grounds it is not 
unreasonable to imagine that the new religion will 
prove a unifying influence and a strong reinforcement 
of democracy. 

Whether it will prove as efficient to deter men from 
doing wrong and to encourage them to do right as the 
prevaihng religions have been, is a question which only 
experience can answer. In these two respects neither 
the threats nor the promises of the older reHgions have 
been remarkably successful in society at large. The fear 
of hell has not proved effective to deter men from wrong- 
doing, and heaven has never yet been described in terms 
very attractive to the average man or woman. Both 



212 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

are indeed unimaginable. The great geniuses, like Dante 
and Swedenborg, have only produced fantastic and incred- 
ible pictures of either state. 

The modern man would hardly feel any appreciable 
loss of motive power toward good or away from evil, if 
heaven were burnt and hell quenched. The prevailing 
Christian conceptions of heaven and hell have hardly 
any more influence with educated people in these days 
than Olympus and Hades have. The modern mind 
craves an immediate motive or leading, good for to-day 
on this earth. The new reUgion builds on the actual 
experience of men and women and of human society as a 
whole. The motive powers it relies on have been, and 
are, at work in innumerable human hves; and its beatific 
visions and its hopes are better grounded than those of 
traditional rehgion and finer — because free from all 
selfishness, and from the imagery of governments, courts, 
social distinctions, and war. 

Finally, this twentieth century religion is not only to 
be in harmony with the great secular movements of 
modern society — democracy, individuahsm, social ideal- 
ism, the zeal for education, the spirit of research, the 
modern tendency to welcome the new, the fresh powers 
of preventive medicine and the recent advances in busi- 
ness and industrial ethics — but also in essential agree- 
ment with the direct personal teachings of Jesus, as they 
are reported in the Gospels. The revelation he gave to 
mankind thus becomes more wonderful than ever. 



CHARLES H. PARKHURST 213 



"THE NEW RELIGION": A CRITICISM 

CHARLES H. PARKHURST 

Pastor of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church 
of New York City 

(Extract from a sermon delivered in the Madison Square Pres- 
byterian Church, New York city, October 24, 1909.) 

Any man who knows anything, unless he knows it in 
a very modest way, is Hable to think that he knows more 
than he does. Human nature is pecuHar, and we all 
have it. 

This tendency, illustrated by the distinguished ex-presi- 
dent of Harvard University, of attempting to sound the 
depths of spiritual reality with the plumb-line of scientific 
thought, is not a new one, and proceeds upon the false 
assumption that there is nothing in the world too fine 
to escape the detection and the appreciation of disci- 
plined intellect. There is a great deal that comes into 
life which never entered there along any logical roadway 
of refined and exquisite thinking. The heart too has 
reasons of which the brain knows nothing. Discipline 
of a certain kind disqualifies, more than it qualifies, for 
the discovery of the best which life has to give and the 
best which it is competent to receive. There is a close 
kind of ratiocination which, while it opens the smaller 
doors of discovery, slams to with a bang doors that are 
larger. A man whose principle function of discernment 
is of the cerebral order will create for himself and for 
others a world whose very flatness makes it easily intel- 
ligible and the simplicity of whose arrangements makes 



214 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

facile appeal to the unambitious sense of what is system- 
atized and methodical; but such a world is not an inter- 
esting world. It is not a world that nourishes long 
thoughts, high aims, and the sweetest nobiHty of life. 
It takes clouds as well as transparent sunshine to make 
out God's world, and stars to glimmer in the firmament 
as well as candles and lanterns to shed ambiguous patches 
of light on the ground, in order to complete a universe 
that will measure up the requirements of the soul. In 
the natural world the best part of any landscape is that 
point along the edge of the world where the things that 
are visible shade off and melt away into the unseen. 

The fault with the kind of reUgious philosophizing to 
which we have recently been treated is that it imprisons 
the spirit within a horizon that is near and that is so 
sharply lined as to discourage suspicion that there is 
much of anything beyond the horizon. And a small flat 
world makes small, flat souls. A world furnished with 
no broad ocean transforms human spirits into patches 
of Sahara. It is therefore that history, when it has 
moved forward, has moved under the shepherding guid- 
ance of men and women whose presentiments outran the 
slow pace of analytical thought, and whose experiences 
were able to maintain themselves at an altitude to which 
unwinged logic was incompetent to soar. The great 
things of the past centuries have been done at the impulse 
and inspiration of convictions and experiences for which 
there is no place allowed in the four-cornered scheme of 
the Cambridge oracle. Our Teutonic ancestors were 
brought out of the woods into civiUzation by men whose 
consciences grasped upon a higher law than any enacted 
by the legislature of nature and whose fealty was to the 



CHARLES H. PARKHURST 215 

same Christ that transformed Saul into Paul, and that 
has been the presiding genius of those souls that have 
shone with the warmest fervor and the purest light 
during all these centuries. 

With as hard, bloodless, and visionless a philosophy as 
has just been oracularly offered to our acceptance we 
should have no Young Men's Christian Associations, no 
Salvation Army, no missionaries wearing out their lives 
on the frontier or making their blood an offering on the 
altar of Christian sacrifice. Said to me, recently, the 
secretary of one of our foreign missionary boards, "We 
have thousands of missionaries that leave home and 
comforts behind them to go abroad and preach a Christed 
gospel, but I have no record of anyone who has the 
enthusiasm to go to the heathen and proclaim to them a 
Christless philosophy." A tree is known by its fruits. 
The test of value is its producing energy. The sweetest 
thoughts embalmed in literature, the finest lives recorded 
in the annals of human biography, the most thrilling 
passages in the progress of the world's history, have 
been God's gift to the world through His son, Jesus Christ, 
our Lord. By every argument deducible from the past, 
by every reason derivable from the tenderest and strongest 
experience of those whose vision has pressed most deeply 
into the mysteries of the spiritual world, our loving faith 
cannot falter in its loyalty to the Divine Christ. By 
Him we stand and to Him will we continue to render the 
tribute of our love and confidence, our service and our 
praise. 



2l6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE PRACTISE OF IMMORTALITY 

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 

Author and Lecturer; pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of Columbus, Ohio 

The only way, I think, to get any firm assurance of 
any of the great fundamental facts of life, is not to try 
to prove them by what you call scientific evidence, but 
to assume them and build your life on them. 

Foundations are always assumed. There is not a build- 
ing in the world which has not been obliged to accept 
its foundation. It rests on the earth. It depends for 
its stability on the stability of the earth. No builder 
can find or fashion any other foundation for his build- 
ing than that which the earth gives him. After all his 
digging and blasting and boring he must finally trust 
the earth. If we cannot trust the earth he cannot build. 
If his building stands, the final reason will be that the 
earth sustains it. 

Just as the foundations of our architecture are assumed, 
so are the foundations of our science. Science begins 
with an assumption, with something that cannot be 
proved, with what Mr. Huxley calls a ''great arc of 
faith." Science cannot stir a step without taldng for 
granted what can never be proved — the uniformity of 
natural law. That is the one great fact of science, the 
one underlying, over-arching, all-encompassing, archi- 
tectonic, scientific truth — but it is impossible to prove 
it; the scientist just believes it, takes it for granted, and 
goes ahead with his investigations as if he were perfectly 



WASHINGTON GLADDEN 217 

sure of it. It is by assuming it that he becomes sure of 
it. If he would not proceed until he had demonstrated 
it, science would be at an end. 

In the same manner, as we have seen in other studies, 
the only way to be sure of God is to assume his constant 
presence in our lives and Uve accordingly. That will 
make any man sure of him. The foundation of religion, 
as of science, is an assumption. It is no more unreason- 
able to begin religion by taking God for granted than 
it is to begin in science by taking the uniformity of law 
for granted. It is no more unphilosophical to assume 
that reason and goodness and love are universal than 
to assume that order and law are universal. No man 
can prove the one by logic or scientific evidence any 
more than he can prove the other, but any man who will 
assume that love is infinite and omnipresent and omnipo- 
tent; that it rules the universe; that it waits at every 
portal of sense and spirit to bring him light and joy and 
liberty; any man who will assume that this is true and 
build his life upon it will know by an experience which 
all the logic in the world cannot confute that God is, 
and that He is the rewarder of those who put their trust 
in Him. To his intellect as well as to his heart this 
confidence will bring repose. 



2i8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE BIBLE AND THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY 

MAN 

FRANK W. GUNSAULUS 

President of Armour Institute 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, 
New York, August 17, 1909.) 

Let us be willing to come to the Bible as men of the 
twentieth century, with certain facts that are true, Bible 
or no Bible; and with a certain outlook that is not the 
outlook of the clergy or of the church, but of humanity. 
If this Bible is what we beheve it to be, the record 
of the revelation of God in humanity through a people 
peculiarly religious, it has a unity and a grandeur that 
are without dispute, that will disclose themselves even 
in spite of opinions concerning the nature of the Bible 
that have obtained in times past. 

The man of the twentieth century, with the political 
economy, psychology, and science of the twentieth cen- 
tury, need not depend upon church councils to beUeve 
in the spiritual truth of the first chapters of Genesis. 
It is a fact that man begins in naturahsm. It is not 
true because it is in the Bible, but it is in the Bible be- 
cause it is true. This is not an Eden of the past, but 
of the present. Your baby is in Eden. The rivers that 
watered your life came out of the ground. The river 
that waters the early life of a human being, that is, the 
motive power, is earthly. The child does what he does 
for reasons of earth. He belongs to the earth. His 
Eden is a deHght to him. We need not worry about the 



FRANK W. GUNSAULUS 219 

doctrine of total depravity that lifts its scarred head in 
your mind as I speak. Total depravity as a doctrine is 
total nonsense. If my watch is depraved it so much less 
is a watch, and if it is totally depraved it is no watch. 

Coming out of man's earthly life there are certain 
motives that come into the form of the will of Adam. 
Man has a great choice between the tree of Hfe and the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree of hfe 
represents the Hfe of obedience and absolute trust. Then 
there is the other tree. In accord with modern psychology 
and the psychology of the Bible there comes another 
voice. You can be as God's. It is the argument of 
ambition. The only way that one may^ eat of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil is by experiencing 
the difference between good and evil. The moment that 
argument is used to the intellect, Hamlet has come, the 
rationahst is born. I do not stop to ask about the neces- 
sity of this fall of man. It is a fact in man's moral expe- 
rience. Here is man with his Eden lost, but he is man 
still. Your mythical Prometheus, the work of the daring 
intellect of humanity, abides in the present history of 
human nature. The Eden of Adam was the Eden 
of innocence, of inexperience, of ignorance; but it was 
Eden, and many people are longing to go back to it. 
But the modern man who reasons the facts in the case 
knows that after Adam has lost his Eden there are cer- 
tain facts left. One is man, and one is God. God is 
still God. He made man and man is still God's child. 
Since man is man and God is God, there is no change in 
the necessity that man shall have a river. Must there 
not still be motive power? Nor is there anything in his 
experience that removes the necessity for the tree of 



220 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

life. But the angel stands with the flaming sword. 
When innocence is gone, it is gone forever. The students 
of humanity, like George Eliot, or Shakespeare, know that 
to return to a lost innocence is impossible. But I will 
have no theology, no Bible, that does not help in three 
tilings: God must keep His word with me though I have 
lost my Eden; I must eat of the tree of life because that 
is the only way to Hve; I must have a moral motive 
power, the river of hfe. 

In the history of religion, of man's effort to get to 
himself, this means that there have been motive powers 
coming from the church to help man toward justice 
and righteousness. I have no doubt that the temple, 
the church, has been a half-way place of the utmost 
importance; but what man must have, if we have lost 
God, is not an embodiment in a temple, but an incar- 
nation, a personality. The garden was individualism, 
and man lost it through individual selfishness. What 
ever he gains he must gain through self-sacrifice. 
Whatever hes beyond must be social. What lies before 
man after an experience of that sort is a holy city as 
revealed in Revelations. 



CHRISTIANITY IS REAL 

WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE 
President of Brown University 

(Condensed from an address at Chautauqua, New York, August 
19, 1909.) 

The Christian religion is not an adornment or decora- 
tion of life. It is not a pillow for the last hour, a form 



WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE 221 

of insurance for the future world. It is not a skilful 
argument. It is the sustenence of the true life. It is 
the bread of God that cometh down from heaven. No 
man ever came to believe in Jesus Christ as the last 
step in a course of reasoning any more than a man beheves 
in his mother in that way. He believes in his mother 
because such belief satisfies the deepest longings and 
instincts of his nature, because he can explain more 
things by beHef in her than by doubting her. 

The question is not whether Christianity is true, but 
whether it is real. Have the ideals of the New Testa- 
ment been a real source of moral energy to the world 
to-day? When I say anything is real I mean that I can 
perceive it, that I have perceived it, that others may per- 
ceive it, and that beUef in it brings more satisfaction 
than its denial could bring. 

The reahty of God is proved by the fact that 
the noblest souls have perceived his presence in the 
world. I have perceived that presence in my best hours 
when passion was hushed and truth was clear. It satis- 
fies my hunger. It is bread, not to be demonstrated, but 
to be assimilated and brought into Hfe. The people 
who are offering Biblical criticism, or sociology, or meta- 
physics in place of religion are offering the chemical 
formulae in place of the life-giving bread. 

Two needs that the Christian religion supplies are a 
perception of the spiritual meaning behind the changing 
world and a support for our ideals. The Christian reHg- 
ion says that the world has been thought through by an 
IntelHgence, and bids us speak to that IntelHgence as a 
father. 

The reason that Christianity was first rejected by 



222 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans was that they declined 
to accept the Christian ideal of manhood and womanhood. 
The Ufe of the active worid to-day is an attack upon a 
young man's ideals. College hfe also is a very active 
Hfe to-day, and the important thing is that the freshman 
shall be able to keep his ideals. Many a man gains 
prizes, wins honors, and pubhc applause, but loses his 
ideals. Most of us go out into Hfe with our ideals clear. 
We want to see the religious freedom of the eighteenth 
century, and the poHtical freedom of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, followed by economic freedom in the twentieth 
century. We want to see righteousness dawn in the 
halls of Congress. The idea of a certain United States 
senator, publicly expressed a dozen years or so ago, that 
"the purification of politics is an iridescent dream," is 
now a dead idea. 

All over this country there are young men who are 
devoting themselves to the purification of this repubHc. 
I know many of them, and I know that the foundation 
of their political ideahsm is their religious behef. They 
beheve that American ideals can be saved because they 
beheve in a God behind our life. Christianity is the 
only power in the modern world that can keep us from 
despair. 



BALLINGTON BOOTH 223 



WITHOUT GOD IS NOTHING 

BALLINGTON BOOTH 

President of the Volunteers of America 

(Extracts from his annual address to the Grand Field Council 
of the Volunteers of America, at Carnegie Hall, New York city, 
October 30, 1905.) 

There is a French adage, "Sans Dieu Rien" — Without 
God is nothing. When we look abroad upon the earth, 
wheresoever we turn our eyes, we are forced to a realiza- 
tion of the divine influence. When we gaze upon the 
ocean storm as the wind-lashed waves vie with one 
another in height and strength, churning the foam upon 
their angry crests, causing one to feel one's helplessness 
in their presence, one is impressed with the distance 
between human and divine strength. As one witnesses 
the steady descent of the sun at eventide, as all nature is 
bathed in its crimson glory, to leave its rich afterglow to 
tint the sky with its fading Hght, one marvels at the 
matchless touch of the divine painter. As one beholds 
the lurid lightning sundering the heavens, and Hstens to 
the crash of the thimderbolt and the rumble of heaven's 
artillery as it echoes and reverberates in the distant 
hills, one is brought to recognize how puny is the arm 
of man before the arm of Omnipotence. In all these, 
as in other elements of nature, one is led to exclaim, in 
the language of the French adage, "Without God is 
nothing." 

When the needle has lost its magnetism, it ceases to 
point to the north as a guide to the mariner dependent 



224 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

upon its accuracy, and if our spirits have lost their divine 
magnetism or inspiration, we shall cease to point men to 
the cross of Calvary. This is our power, oh, brethren! 
this is our power, and to be weak in any degree in 
this essential is, proportionately, to lose our grip upon 
the masses. But with eye, heart, and lips under the 
influence of divine emotion, and on fire with passion for 
souls, we shall succeed. Like George Whitefield, we shall 
be so inspired that we can preach as "Thus and thus saith 
the Lord," until men unite in the cry, "Men and brethren, 
what shall I do to be saved?" Like Jonathan Edwards, 
we can enforce the old truths of the Bible so that even 
skeptical men cannot cavil at their veracity. Like Charles 
Spurgeon, we can so represent the sweetness of the Gospel 
that our expectant hearers shall be charmed with the 
story of the cross. Like Charles Finney, we shall be 
able to so prick men's consciences with the logic of the 
truth that they will become aroused from their lethargy 
and indifference. 

It is commonly supposed that the tree in its comely 
and mature appearance, as it waves its branches in the 
broad expanse and spreads out its living green toward 
heaven, receives its strength from the ground. But a 
great scientist has reminded us that whilst this is in a 
measure true, yet its primary growth, strength, and glory 
are received from ahove^ not beneath. The tendency of 
the soil, darkness, and nourishment beneath is all in the 
direction of forcing the tree upward into the world above, 
which is the object of its life, where the light and warmth 
of the sun, the breezes and dews of the summer, and 
storms and frosts of winter, all in turn add to its power 
of endurance and its grandeur of majestic beauty. In 



BALLINGTON BOOTH 225 

the depths of the ground it spreads its grim and distorted 
roots surrounded by what is least comely to the eye, 
while aloft in sight of all beholders, it reveals its stately 
boughs, its fairy-like leaves and fragrant blossoms. So, 
my brethren, though you and I may be laboring among 
those in the under world who are the least thankful or 
the least just, among those who are the most unloved 
or the most unlovely, whose surroundings may be Hke the 
dark and dank deeps of a moat, yet we can ever be lift- 
ing our hearts above these masses of difficulties — these 
social roots and water-logged leaves — to enjoy the life 
of a new Hght, a new purity, and a new inspiration. 

My brethren, let us not become engrossed with the 
things of this world to the exclusion of the things of the 
next. Let not earth's riches hollow out our hearts. 
Little they may seem, but a Httle of the world may shut 
out a great deal of heaven. Robert Hall, giving an 
object lesson to a man absorbed in money-making, said: 
*' Sir, do you see this coin ? It is small in itself, but when 
I bring it close to the eye I find that it shuts out the 
sun and the whole heavens." Oh, may the luster of the 
world's attractions be ever dimmed by the glory of our 
mission. So precious to us is the possession of God's 
love, so important is His divine recognition, and so 
valuable is the inspiration of His spirit, that we cannot 
afford to allow anything to come before our spiritual 
eyes that would hide Him from the sky of our souls. 
Possessing such a qualification, we cannot lose, we can 
only gain. We shall not decrease, but increase, and 
upon whatever part of His kingdom He looks down and 
regards our work, we shall feel the strength of His recog- 
nition and the superiority of His leadership. 



226 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



OUR COUNTRY AND THE WORLD 

JOSIAH STRONG 
President of the American Institute of Social Service 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, New 
York, July 22, 1909.) 

America is God's great laboratory for the world. 
America is not only the land of great opportunity, but 
these are the days of great opportunity. 

The great periods of the world are the periods of transi- 
tion. I believe that this is the period of supreme transi- 
tion in all the ages. I believe that the changes that have 
taken place and are still in progress are the greatest that 
ever have or ever can take place. I believe that this 
transition is the mighty hinge of history on which turn 
the destinies of states and nations. 

Within the last hundred years there has sprung up a 
new ci\'ilization, because man has learned a new method 
of gaining a Hvelihood that is radically different from 
anything before. The cause of this change is man's 
control of the forces of nature. The definite change 
rests in the fact that mechanical power has taken the 
place of physical power. That fact is here and it is 
here to stay. We have, of course, our agricultural and 
our commercial elements in our civilization, but because 
manufacturing is dominant we call our civilization indus- 
trial. This great change is destined to come wherever 
man wants and muscles work. The problems that it 
brings therefore are world problems. These great prob- 
lems created by the new civiHzation are more intense in 



JOSIAH STRONG 227 

the United States than anywhere else in the world, but 
generally speaking we have better faciUties for their 
solution. 

The world-old social problem has been complicated by 
the industrial revolution. This problem, whose essence 
consists in the relation of man to his fellows, has been 
made more difficult through the increasing interdepend- 
ence of m^en because of the increasing division of labor. 
We sustain thousands of relations to-day that did not 
exist two generations ago. These relations imply mutual 
obhgation. People may be good friends who hve a mile 
apart, but if brought into the same house they cannot 
even be good neighbors. The conditions of modern 
civihzation are tying classes together. The motto of 
the old civihzation was, "Each man for himself"; the 
motto of the new must be, "Each for all and all for each." 
The troubles of to-day are largely due to the fact that 
we have brought the old ethics into the new conditions. 
Our social problem can be solved only by a readjustment 
of relations. That adjustment can take place easier 
where men are free. Because of the freedom of our 
institutions it is easier to establish right relations here 
than where there are permanent strata of society. 

The religion that is precisely adapted to the solution 
of present-day problems is Christianity. The teachings 
of Jesus Christ concerning the relation of man to his 
fellows will solve these problems, and nothing else can. 



228 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION AND PEACE 

RICHARD BARTHOLDT 

Congressman from Missouri and President of the Interparliamentary 
Union for the Promotion of International Arbitration 

(Condensed from an address at the Second National Peace Con- 
gress, at Chicago, May 4, 1909.) 

From childhood on, man is constantly impressed with 
the splendid paraphernalia of war. As children we play 
with toy soldiers; in school we find war glorified in the 
text-books we have to read; as youths we are taught that 
patriotism requires our joining the militia; and as men 
our eyes are dazzled with shining uniforms and our ears 
are filled with martial music. 

Against all these machinations which impress the minds 
of the people, through eyes and ears, with the glory of 
militarism and war, the friends of world-wide peace are 
at a great disadvantage, for the weapons they employ 
in their war upon war are invisible and the progress of 
their cause cannot be seen. But despite this disadvan- 
tage, let me tell you that all the claptrap of miHtarism 
will avail nothing in the end as against the resistless 
force of our idea. 

What, then, is our idea ? Let me present it to you in 
a nutshell. It is that our peace with foreign nations shall 
be secured in exactly the same manner as our domestic 
peace is secured; namely, by referring all controversies 
to the courts for settlement. This method of settling 
disputes has been enacted into law by every civilized 
nation in order to secure its peace at home, and we insist 



RICIL\RD BARTHOLDT 229 

that each nation should readily consent to, aye, strive 
for, similar international enactments in order to secure 
its peace abroad. 

Is this plain enough? But you will see it still more 
plainly by raising yourselves a httle above the level to 
take a bird's-eye view of the world and watch the atti- 
tude of the nations toward their own citizens, on the 
one hand, and toward their sister nations, on the other. 
Suppose we could turn the hands of the clock backward 
and allow indi\dduals to do as nations do by shaping 
our home conduct after the international pattern, do 
you know what would happen ? Why, we would relapse 
into barbarism; the mailed hand would rule; every house 
would be an arsenal; men would walk about armed to 
their teeth; and blood would constantly flow foot high. 
It is the kind of peace that prevailed when might was 
right; it is the peace which now prevails as between nation 
and nation and which the advocates of armaments and 
battle-ships uphold and pray for. But we cannot go 
backward; we must go forward; hence the rule of arbi- 
trary power which now controls international relations 
will not be extended to our domestic affairs, but, on the 
contrary, the mantle of law and order which now covers 
the home affairs of each nation will soon be thro^vTi over 
and made to cover and grace all the great nations in 
their conduct toward one another. It is the inevitable 
logic of events. By establishing courts the nations first 
secured justice and peace in their own domain; by creat- 
ing the high court at The Hague they have taken the 
next step to a higher plane to secure justice and peace 
in their relations with each other. 

All reasonable beings are agreed that war is one of the 



230 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

greatest, if not the greatest, of the evils with which the 
world has been afflicted from the dawn of history. But 
while the human family for more than two thousand 
years bewailed the horrors of that "plague of mankind," 
as Washington called it, it failed to offer a right remedy. 
That remedy has now been found. It is safe and sane 
and practical. It is not the dream of theorists, but the 
well-defined plan of jurists and statesmen, an evolution 
of the civic order recognized the world over. The United 
States now spends over three hundred miUion dollars a 
year for its army and navy, of which two hundred milhons 
could easily be saved under our plan, to be devoted to 
the improvement of rivers and harbors and highways, 
and to the encouragement of art, science, and education. 
Think of what a paradise the country could be made 
with an annual expenditure of two hundred millions for 
such purposes, or what burdens could be lifted from the 
shoulders of the people! 

The world is slowly, but surely, rallying around the 
banners of peace. It gravitates in an ascending Une to 
the higher plane of one common brotherhood, where the 
shedding of human blood for the sake of trade or any 
other purpose is regarded as a relic of barbarism, and 
where the three watchwords of a new world organization 
wiU be humanity, justice, and peace. In this onward 
march the United States should lead. It will be the 
fulfilment of our country's sublime mission. It will lend 
a new significance to the flag and will cause all mankind 
to bless the Stars and Stripes as the emblem of their 
salvation as well as ours. 



SETH LOW 231 

WORLD PEACE 

SETH LOW 
Former President of Columbia University 

(Extract from an address delivered in connection with the Hudson- 
Fulton Celebration, 1909, at a banquet given by the German-Ameri- 
cans of New York in honor of Grossadmiral von Koester.) 

In these days of free intercourse between the people 
of all nations, the prosperity of every nation is likely 
to be for the advantage of every other nation. I cannot 
imagine any greater misfortune that can befall mankind 
than to have any two of the great nations of the v/orld 
feel that their interests necessitate a trial of strength 
with each other. No great nations can fight to-day 
without involving all the other nations of the w^orld in 
the consequences of their struggle more directly than 
ever before. We of the United States, I am confident, 
may be relied upon to do everything in our power to 
develop a world public opinion that will powerfully help 
to maintain the peace of the world. 

The things and the forces that are seen are temporal. 
It is the things and the forces that are not seen that are 
eternal. The trolley wire attached to loaded cars would 
soon be snapped if the attempt were made to haul the 
cars by direct traction; but that same trolley wire can 
be charged with an invisible force that will move all the 
cars of a great city, loaded to their utmost capacity. 
That, it seems to me, is a just illustration of the force 
of public opinion. It is intangible; it cannot be weighed; 
it cannot be seen; and yet, more and more, in every 



232 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

country of the world, whatever be its form of govern- 
ment, this intangible public opinion is becoming the 
decisive force that shapes the destiny of the peoples. 
Slowly, if you please, but surely, there is developing a 
public opinion of the world to the bar of which every 
nation must come which breaks the peace of the world. 
My prayer is that the United States, and England, my 
mother country, and Germany, which is your father- 
land, each in its own measure, may help powerfully to 
develop the pubHc opinion that one day will bring about 
for all nations that "pax humana," which will mean the 
peace and prosperity of the whole world. 



THE NATIONAL DEFENSE 

RICHMOND P. HOBSON 
Congressman from Alabama 

(Extract from a speech delivered in Congress December 14, 1909.) 

A MAN must not only have life, but he must have lib- 
erty. A nation must not only possess its territory, but 
it must be free to operate its institutions unmolested 
within that territory. Since the promulgation of the 
Monroe Doctrine no nation of Europe has dared to 
menace the exercise of sovereign rights by any American 
government within its own territory. But that is not 
true as regards Asiatic nations. 

It is no news to members of this House that despite 
the fact that when the United States Government itself 
could not compel the people of San Francisco — or of 



RICHMOND P. HOBSON 233 

any city or state — to put certain students or certain 
scholars in its schools along with certain other scholars, 
nevertheless a foreign power has dared to attempt this, 
has succeeded in doing this, through the cooperation of 
the President of the United States. In the great sover- 
eign states of the Pacific coast the question has inevitably 
arisen as to regulations that will solve the great diffi- 
culties that confront our people there growing out of 
the race question. When they have sought to pass the 
needed regulations for segregation in accordance with 
their sovereign rights, expressly recognized and guaran- 
teed by the Constitution, regulations already in opera- 
tion as respects Americans in Japan, what happened? 
They were forbidden to do in their owti domain, as respects 
Japanese, what Japan now does in her own territory 
regarding Americans. Forbidden by whom? By the 
Japanese government. And yet no citizen of the United 
States can go to Japan and hve where he pleases. They 
segregate all white men in Japan. And the only way 
to solve the race problem of the Pacific coast is to segre- 
gate all the yellow people there. The legislatures of 
those great commonwealths have the right, according 
to our Constitution, without let or hindrance from any 
quarter, to work out this solution for the race problems 
with which they are confronted. While engaged in the 
exercise of this sovereign right, a state legislature, as well 
as the school board of an American city — San Francisco 
— were solemnly informed by the President of the United 
States that the nation could not protect them in the 
exercise of their rights, and that they must not only 
obey the dictate of a foreign power, but that they must 
even cease discussing the questions involved. 



234 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Why should not this nation recognize the true prin- 
ciple of national defense ? Why should not the elements 
of this problem receive the careful attention of the repre- 
sentatives of the people sitting in this assembly? Why 
should we not get the true principle and work out a 
scientific naval policy ? The pages of history show that 
great sociological forces, when not properly counterbal- 
anced by equiHbrium of armed power, will bring on war 
as surely as to-morrow's sun is going to rise. By accept- 
ing seats in this House we have assumed great responsi- 
biUties. By its course this House is menacing the peace 
of the world, when we ought to be its chief preserver. 
We are rapidly putting our country in such a position 
that when differences do arise and a peaceable solution 
becomes impossible, humiliation will be inevitable — such 
humiliation as no Anglo-Saxon race has ever yet endured. 
Then out of the ashes of humihation this poHcy of neglect 
would compel us to organize a mighty war of endurance 
and of exhaustion, out of which America would emerge 
victorious, because our resources are so boundless. But 
oh! at what a cost, not only to ourselves in men and 
money, but in the blow that we would strike at the future 
of free institutions, at the holy cause of peace. Because 
of our neglect to do our full duty as representatives of 
the American people we increase the danger of war, and 
we prolong the period when nations resort to the sword 
instead of to courts of justice for the settlement of their 
differences. 



FRANK M. NYE 235 

ON RAISING THE BATTLE-SHIP ''MAINE" 

FRANK M. NYE 
Congresstnan from Minnesota 

(Remarks on a bill to raise the wreck of the Maine, delivered in 
the House of Representatives, March 23, 1910.) 

Matters of a material consideration have been ably 
discussed here, matters pertaining to the details of the 
work to be accomphshed in the raising of the Mainey 
but it seems to me that over and above all questions of 
clearing the channel for the way of the world's commerce, 
and over and above the great question of how the ship 
was blown up, is the duty of the House to express its 
patriotic love for the memory of the men who went down 
on that fatal day. Some have said that this is pure 
sentiment, but it seems to me that national sentiment 
of such a character as this is highly worthy of a great 
people. The pure sentiment of the nation is, in its last 
analysis, that for which men fight and for which they 
die. Pure sentiment is the star toward which all civiliza- 
tion moves in the night of human contention and in the 
slow advance of man toward the Hght of a purer and 
nobler patriotism. 

There is a beautiful legend of a S^iss \dllage, a httle 
village in the mountains, centuries ago, where in the 
chapel they had an organ that gave forth enchanting, 
elevating, soul-stirring tones that touched the hearts of 
the humble \dllagers. There came a time of national 
disturbance, when marauders invaded the region, and it 
was known that the \allage was to be overrun and ran- 
sacked and its people perhaps murdered. 



236 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

The villagers took from out the chapel this organ and 
carried it to a mountain lake and sank it. After peace 
had finally been restored the villagers returned, and for 
generations there was a legend that at a certain hour, I 
think at twilight, there came upon the breezes from the 
lake the same sweet music that had stirred the souls of 
their fathers before them. But there comes to us to-day- 
no such music, but a rebuke from the noble dead, who 
sleep in that dark sepulcher of the sea, telling us that we 
have been recreant to a trust. The noblest thing we can 
do is to make haste now, late as it is, to rescue this ship 
with these poor bodies, and to inter in fitting manner the 
remains of those who went down in the ill-fated Maine, 
that liberty and justice and all that is noble and pure 
in civilization may be enthroned in a people's love and 
memory. 



A FREE PRESS AND FREE PAPER 

THOMAS P. GORE 

United States Senator from Oklahoma 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the Senate of the United 
States May 31, 1909.) 

Mr. President: The fact that we compete in all the 
markets of the world, with all the countries of the world, 
and that we sometimes sell cheaper abroad than at home, 
takes away from the paper manufacturers every claim 
and title to tariff protection. 

Moreover, I do not look upon this question as being on 



THOMAS P. GORE 237 

an absolute level with other industrial and commercial 
questions which have been debated and decided pending 
this tariff revision. I think there are other and higher 
considerations. I know there are those who reduce 
every proposition to a common denominator of dollars 
and cents. They have no patience with any proposal 
which cannot be expressed with the dollar mark and a 
decimal. There are those who have deified the dollar 
and who have worshiped gold as their god. I know that 
considerations of humanity, of progress, and enhghten- 
ment do not appeal to those idolators. But it seems to 
me that this proposition to reduce the tariff on print 
paper rests upon the very highest considerations of 
patriotism and of pubUc poHcy. 

We expend $343,000,000 every year in the common 
schools of the country for the education of the youths 
of the land, a larger sum, as I remember, than was ever 
raised in a single year by any tariff law ever enacted 
during the history of this country. We have seventeen 
million children enrolled and nearly half a miUion good men 
and women consecrated to the education of our children. 
Yet we impose a tax of from ten to twelve dollars a ton 
on the paper that is used in the manufacture of school- 
books for our children. We largely neutrahze the bene- 
fits and blessings of this taxation dedicated as a sacred 
fund to the education of the coming men and the coming 
women of America, the men who must fight our battles 
in the future and the women who must mother the gen- 
erations of unborn Americans. In my judgment a tax 
on print paper is a tax on intelHgence. It is a fine on 
knowledge. It sets a premium upon ignorance and a 
penalty upon learning. A tax on print paper is a shade 



238 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

on the lamp of enlightenment and a cloud over the sun 
of civilization. 

It is as true as it is ancient that a free press is the 
palladium of liberty. Tyrants, sir, have never been able 
to thrive in that white light which a free press sheds 
upon the throne. It is the sacred duty of the press to 
speak truth to the king in the hearing of the people and 
to the people in the hearing of the king. 

Mr. President, the first recorded utterance of the most 
high God was, "Let there be light." This has ever 
been the battle hymn of human progress. This has ever 
been and must ever be the watchword of advancing 
civilization. The nation that forgets this mandate must 
relapse into social chaos and intellectual night. There 
are kindreds among the sons of men who are still thralled 
to the power of darkness. There are senators who seem 
to prefer darkness rather than Hght. Notwithstanding 
the first fiat of Omnipotence was, "Let there be Hght," 
yet this Senate, in defiance of the decree, sets up its 
puny enactment, "Let there be night." But hght, sir, 
whether physical, intellectual, or moral, is a blessing to 
be sought and not an evil to be shunned. I would not 
place a meter upon the eyeUds of the people and charge 
them for the joyous sunbeams. I would not annul or 
defy the ordinance of the Almighty. 



JOHN D. LONG 239 



AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 

JOHN D. LONG 

Ex-Governor of Massachusetts 

(The concluding part of a Fourth of July address at Springfield, 
Massachusetts, 1909.) 

I WENT last year to the graduating exercises at the 
Hancock school for girls at the North End of Boston. 
It was once the aristocratic part of that city. Later our 
Irish people had filled it. But last year in the graduating 
class was neither a Yankee nor a Celt. They were all 
Russians, Jews, Poles, and especially Itahans. Arrayed 
on the stage in their white dresses and neat shoes, singing 
with exquisite voices, showing in their written and spoken 
exercises the best scholarship, differing in appearance in 
no respect from a similar gathering in the most old-time 
Anglo-Saxon community in one of our rural villages, they 
sang ''America" and ''The Star-Spangled Banner." 
They declaimed of our country and our great names; 
they were full of the inspiration of American life. In 
short, they were American citizens. 

And what responsibility is on this new cosmopolitan 
and American citizen which now each one of us is! The 
past is secure. But what of the future ? What are you 
going to do, you, of all these races, now one ? What are 
you going to do for religion, with whatever church you 
may be associated, — not the religion which finds its 
expression in mere formula and phrase, but in righteous- 
ness of life, in recognition of obligation to God, and in 
the effluence of beneficence to your fellowmen? 



240 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

What are you going to do on this vital question of 
temperance, — not approaching it in any extravagant or 
intemperate way, but recognizing the inexpressible misery, 
crime, cost, disgrace, and social and political corruption 
which it entails, doing what you can by fitting word and 
influence, and especially by your own constant personal 
example, to help check this appalling source of evil? 

What are you going to do in charity, — not merely 
the overflowing of your abundance upon the poor, the 
sick, the hungry, to supply their material needs, but in 
the more delicate charities in social life and commimi- 
cation, not as between those who have more and those 
who have less, but as between members of one great 
community, all sensitive to the sHghtest chill or neglect 
and all responsive to the Hghtest touch of human sym- 
pathy? These social problems are by no means easy. 
They are not to be cavalierly settled with a fine sentiment 
or a little moraHzing. They involve our practical rela- 
tions as Christians not only toward those who are not 
congenial in social fife, but to criminals, whom we shut 
up and then shun. 

What are you going to do for good poHtics, remember- 
ing that this is a government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people, and that you, and each of you, are the 
people and that that means a government of public opinion 
and that it is you who form that public opinion? Virtue, 
public and private, will become easy and popular when 
it is the badge and inspiration of the leaders; and good 
influences from the top will permeate through the whole 
body politic, as rain filters tlirough the earth and freshens 
it with verdure and beauty and fertility. It is axiom- 
atic that the educated and virtuous in a free state can 



JOSEPH M. DIXON 241 

control it if they will, but only by constant vigilance and 
effort. 

What are you going to do about these wider yawning 
rifts and bitternesses among the elements that make up 
the body poHtic, — the friction between capital and 
labor, the envy of classes? What are you going to do 
to bring them into Christian harmony and into that 
genuine democratic equahty of rights and opportunities 
and enjoyment which is the fundamental principle of 
our poHtical system? 

What are you going to do with all these gathering and 
ominous and festering problems of the time? Will you 
shelter yourself from all responsibiHty of activity in their 
solution, or will you give them the help of your heart 
and hand and of the wealth and prosperity and education 
which are at high tide in your city of Springfield ? These 
are large questions, but they are upon you and upon 
every one of you. You are citizens of no small country. 
What splendid perils and glories are before you! Already 
you hear the ringing cry, "Up and at them!" 



SWOLLEN FORTUNES AND THE TAXATION 
OF INHERITANCES 

JOSEPH M. DIXON 

United States Senator from Montana 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the Senate of the United 
States, June 29, 1909.) 

Someone has said regarding an income tax, "Don't 
disturb the bee while he is gathering the honey." As to 



242 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

an inheritance tax, I would carry the suggestion a little 
further, and suggest that when the bee has gathered the 
honey by his own laborious efforts through the season 
of a long and laborious Ufe, before turning the accumu- 
lated hive of honey over to the drones to eat and fatten 
at the expense of him who gathered it, let the guardian 
of the hive, the Government, step in and take at least a 
small share as a recompense for the expense and care 
that was necessary in safeguarding the hive, without 
which care it would have been impossible for the bee 
to have accumulated his honey. 

I have no envy for the multimillionaire or the great 
modern financial "captains of industry." To the man 
who enters the hsts of the commercial and financial 
world, and by his brain and nerve and brawn fights the 
battle successfully, and wins by honorable means, I have 
nothing but sincere admiration and words of praise. 
But I do beheve that in a democracy, where that which 
we all profess to believe the ideal condition of govern- 
ment is that which gives equal opportunity to all, the 
entailing or the handing down to posterity of these 
latter-day enormous fortunes may produce a condition 
in society that is fraught with great danger. 

While the law of primogeniture is unknown in our 
national hfe, while the practise of entailing landed estates 
is prohibited by constitutional enactments, as a matter 
of cold fact the actual entailing of large estates to the 
second and third generation by their dead owners is 
rapidly becoming the custom with the owners of these 
latter-day swollen fortunes. Of recent years it is the 
almost universal custom of these multimillionaires to 
place their vast estates in a trusteeship by the terms of 



JOSEPH M. DIXON 243 

which they can direct its course for a hundred years 
after they are dead and gone. The well-known case 
of the great estate of Marshall Field, of the estimated 
value of $150,000,000, is now securely lodged in the man- 
agement of trustees for the ultimate benefit and use of 
two boys of the third generation. The $150,000,000 of 
American property for the protection of which this 
Government maintains its army and navy, its courts, its 
legislative and executive branches of government yields 
no direct service to its overlord, the Federal Government. 
In this and hundreds of other cases the "dead hand" is 
once more in direct evidence, in some degree directing 
and controlUng the conditions under which men and 
women of this and succeeding generations must earn 
their Hving, and yet that "dead hand" gives little or 
nothing in return. 

Whatever may be the remedy, if there be a remedy, it 
is apparent to us all that a condition of society that 
permits two of its members to absorb one hundred and 
fifty miUions of the accumulated earnings of others by 
the mere accident of birth is an abnormal and dangerous 
condition for society and government. We may hold 
up our hands in holy horror at this assertion and say 
this is "rank sociaHsm," but it is nevertheless true. 

Even the Wall Street Journal as recently as October, 
1906, in discussing the dangers from "swollen fortunes," 
said: "President Roosevelt isn't the only one who has 
discovered in great individual fortunes a possible peril 
to American Hberties. As long ago as 1849 Horace 
Mann, one of the most patriotic and unselfish servants 
of the people this country has ever produced and to 
whom it owes in largest measure its present great system 



244 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

of public-school education, said: *Vast fortunes are mis- 
fortunes to the state. They confer irresponsible power; 
and human nature, except in the rarest instances, has 
proved incapable of wielding irresponsible power without 
abuse. The feudalism of capital is not a whit less formi- 
dable than the feudalism of force. The milhonaire of our 
day is no less dangerous to the welfare of the community 
than was the baronial lord of the middle ages."* 



THE LEGISLATOR AND THE POPULAR WILL 

FRANK S. BLACK 

Ex-Governor of New York 

(Extract from a speech on "Forefathers' Day," delivered at- the 
annual banquet of the New England Society, New York city, 
December 22, 1908.) 

This is a representative government and the popular 
will should control. But the popular will itself may well 
be guided. The wind that carries your ships is the 
breath of commerce, and commerce is the seed of civiUza- 
tion. But the captain who does not try to breast the 
gale and temper its application is unfit to command a 
ship. Vox populi vox Dei ! Perhaps so. But still upon 
grave questions I had rather trust the pulpit than the 
street. The popular will must prevail, but the populace 
is made up of units, and that still leaves the individual 
the right to speak. The popular will must be the last 
thing recorded, and in that fact lies the individual duty 
to so act and speak and exemplify that that last record 



FRANK S. BLACK 245 

shall be written, not in the anger or greed or impulse of 
the moment, but in the calmness, the reason, and the 
fairness that spring from mutual instruction and for- 
bearance. If you do not so act you are not yielding to 
the popular will; you are fleeing before the tempest. 
You are not a leader of pubUc thought; you are a deserter 
in the face of a high public duty. 

The relinquishment of power by pubHc servants to 
the populace is wrong. The oath of office binds the man 
who takes it to be guided, not by the people's whims 
and himiors which change from day to day, but by their 
Constitution which they have solemnly adopted. That 
Constitution was intended to protect the people against 
the mistakes of their own temper, as well as to guide 
and control their chosen representatives, and while it 
lasts it binds them both. The people are themselves 
the source of power, but not of all power. And when 
the power they have is once delegated, the servant who 
receives it is as much bound to discharge it in accordance 
with his conscience as the people were bound to delegate 
it in accordance with theirs. Once delegated, they have 
no right to resume it except upon the terms to which they 
agreed. They have no control over right and wrong, and 
the rules of good morals that govern a man govern the 
world. Morals are not changed as soon as a crowd gathers. 

Sometimes I think we overlook these obvious truths 
and make too great haste to join the crowd. The greatest 
privilege is to be not with the most, but with the best. 
A man had better be right and alone than wrong with a 
milHon. He may have the whole world's approval, but 
he is nevertheless a wretch if he quails in front of his 
own mirror. 



246 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

The grade of legislation and the standard of official 
performances would be vastly improved if men in public 
life would follow their own beliefs. What this country 
needs is public servants who are not afraid to retire to 
private life. A man had better give up his office and 
keep his self-respect than hold his office without the respect 
of anybody. A public official is a trustee for the general 
welfare, and if he follows every boisterous public fancy 
he is no more fit for his place than a lawyer who tries 
his case as his angry client tells him to, or a doctor who 
gives his patient what he wants. 

We are going fast enough all the time and wrong 
enough part of the time, so that I feel that I am not 
straying far when I bring down from the garret, and 
speak a word in favor of, this dusty and unused quality 
of moderation. 



OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD 

HENEY VAN DYKE 

Professor of English Literature in Princeton University 
Author, Lecturer, and Publicist 

(An extract taken, by permission, from "The Battle of Life," 
by Henry Van Dyke; copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1907.) 

The way to counteract and conquer evil in the world 
is to give our own hearts to the dominion of good, and 
work the works of God while it is day. The strongest 
of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean and gen- 
erous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning 



HENRY VAN DYKE 247 

others, by his cheerful fidehty, to serve the same Master. 
Diseases are not the only things that are contagious. 
Courage is contagious. Kindness is contagious. Manly 
integrity is contagious. All the positive virtues, with 
red blood in their veins, are contagious. The heaviest 
blow that you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just 
to follow the advice which the dying Sir Walter Scott 
gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart, "Be a good man." 

Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and 
apply it to our world and to ourselves. Here are mon- 
strous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be 
the type of them all, because so many of the others are 
its children. Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks 
more lives than war. How shall we oppose it? I do 
not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make 
laws against it. But I do say that we can never really 
conquer the evil in this way. The stronghold of intem- 
perance Hes in the vacancy and despair of men's minds. 
The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful 
and happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how 
to work, how to read, how to play, you fathers, before 
you send them to college, if you want to guard them 
against the temptations of strong drink and the many 
shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of 
your community cheerful and pleasant and interesting, 
you reformers, provide men with recreation which 
will not harm them, if you want to take away the 
power of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. 
Parks and playgrounds, Ubraries and music rooms, clean 
homes and cheerful churches, — these are the efficient 
foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of 
gambUng and lubricity and all the other vices which 



248 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

drag men down by the lower side of their nature because 
the higher side has nothing to ding to, nothing to sustain 
it and hold it up. 

What are you going to do, my brother men, for this 
higher side of human life? What contribution are you 
going to make of your strength, your time, your influence, 
your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller, happier, 
larger, nobler Uf e possible for some of your fellowmen ? 
I do not ask how you are going to do it. You may do 
it in business, in the law, in medicine, in the ministry, 
in teaching, in literature. But this is the question: 
What are you going to give personally to make the human 
Ufe of the place where you do your work purer, stronger, 
brighter, better, and more worth living? That will be 
your best part in the warfare against vice and crime. 

The positive method is the only efficient way to combat 
intellectual error and spiritual evil. False doctrines are 
never argued out of the world. They are pushed back 
by the incoming of the truth as the darkness is pushed 
back by the dawn. 

Last summer I saw two streams emptying into the 
sea. One was a sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, 
fat, muddy bed; and every day the tide came in and 
drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it with 
bitter brine. The other was a vigorous, joyful, brim- 
ming mountain river, fed from unfaiHng springs among 
the hills; and all the time it swept the salt water back 
before it and kept itself pure and sweet; and when the 
tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise higher 
and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the 
Hving stream poured forth into the ocean its tribute 
of living water, — the symbol of that influence which 



ROBERT L. HENRY 249 

keeps the ocean of life from turning into a Dead Sea of 
wickedness. 

My brother men, will you take that living stream as a 
type of your Ufe in the world? The question for you is 
not what you are going to get out of the world, but what 
you are going to give to the world. The only way to 
meet and overcome the inflomng tide of evil is to roll 
against it the outflowing river of good. 



THE TRUST AND THE CONSUMER 

ROBERT L. HENRY 
Congressman from Texas 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, 
January 8, 19 10.) 

Permit me here to present an indictment against the 

Payne-Aldrich sham. It is from the pen of Dr. De Witt 

Hyde, president of Bowdoin College, and should ring 

in the ears of every American voter: 

"Our House of Lords is not made up of landlords, but of steel 
lords, woolen lords, cotton lords, lumber lords, and, as the latest 
creation, zinc lords. The amount of taxes and boimties on steel, 
woolen and cotton goods, lumber, and zinc is determined for us 
not by a responsible ministry as in England, but by these lords 
through the influence they can exert on the indi\ddual members of 
Congress; still more on the pressure they bring to bear on Senate 
and House committees; and most of all by their power to dictate 
terms to the committee on conference, which, subject to the votes 
of their colleagues and the presidential veto, practically determines 
what the tariff shall be." 

The consumer is now robbed by the oil trust, the sugar 
trust, the tobacco trust, the glass trust, the wool trust, 



250 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the manufacturers of hats, shoes, harness, cotton goods, 
agricultural implements, and vast tribes of trust masters 
everywhere. Everything we eat, drink, and wear is 
augmented in price by this outrageous tax law. Bitter 
warfare will be waged till the hordes of trust barons are 
routed "horse, foot, and dragoon," and the forgotten 
man, the consumer, is reestablished in his God-given 
right of equality before the law. A baptismal fire of 
patriotism will sweep through this repubUc when the true 
enormities of the special favors of the bill are manifest. 

We have read a story that Napoleon and the King 
of Prussia were conversing one day. Napoleon boasted 
that the French soldiers were the most patriotic in all 
the world. The King of Prussia disputed it, whereupon 
Napoleon summoned one of the imperial guard into his 
presence and bade him leap from a window forty feet 
above the ground. Instantly the soldier saluted his 
great commander and leaped into eternity. The King of 
Prussia called one of his soldiers and ordered him to per- 
form the same sacrifice. The soldier straightened him- 
self up and asked, ''Is it for you or for the fatherland?" 
The King of Prussia rephed, "No; it is not for the father- 
land, but for me." The soldier rephed, "Then, if it is 
not for the fatherland, but for you, I will not do it." 
Both German and French soldiers were ready to die for 
their countries. And such patriotism should characterize 
us in this fateful hour while we struggle for our inahenable 
rights. For my part, I dedicate to my constituency and 
my country my best energies and intellect in waging 
this just warfare. And with the cherished principles of 
ancient Democracy hugged to our bosoms and the 
unspotted flag, typifying the faith of our fathers, flying 



WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE 251 

above us, we will press the contest against those despoil- 
ing our citizens and perverting our institutions. In this 
perilous hour of history — 

"God give us men. The time demands 
Strong minds, strong hearts, true faith, and ready hands; 
Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
Men who possess opinions and a wiU; 

Men who have honor; men who will not lie; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; 
Tall men, sun crowned, who Kve above the fog • 

In public duty and in private thinking." 



THE CHRISTIAN USE OF WEALTH 

WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE 
President of Bowdoin College 

(Extract from a series of addresses to college students.) 

Do you reaHze how much of human hfe there is stored 
up in what we eat and wear and spend and use? Food 
and raiment, fire and Hght, shelter and rest are bought 
for us by the exposure of the lone shepherd on the moun- 
tainside, the weary weaver at her loom, the weather- 
beaten sailor before the mast, the engineer driving his 
train against the storm, the miner in the bowels of the 
earth, the woodsman in the depths of the forest, the 
fisherman off the foggy banks, the plowman in the monot- 
onous furrow, the cook drudging in the kitchen, the 
washerwoman bending over the tub, and the countless 
host of artisans and teamsters and common laborers who 



252 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

form the broad, firm base on which our civihzation 
rests. 

Because of this high human cost of material goods, all 
waste is wickedness, all ostentation is disgrace. The 
food or raiment that you waste is simply so much human 
toil and sacrifice which you by your wastefulness render 
null and void. The wealth and state you ostentatiously 
display simply show the world how much of the vitality 
of other men and women you burn up in order to keep 
your poor self going. To boast of riches, to take pride 
in luxury, is as though an engine should boast of the 
quantity of coal it could consume, regardless of work 
accompHshed; as though a farm should be proud of the 
fertihzer spread upon it, regardless of the crop raised in 
return. What is the real nature of the idle rich? Pre- 
cisely what do they amount to in the world? To eat 
the bread that other men have toiled to plant and reap 
and transport and cook and serve; to wear the silk and 
woolen that other women have spun and woven and cut 
and sewed; to He in a couch that other hands have spread, 
and under a roof that other arms have reared; not that 
alone — for we all do as much — but to consume these 
things upon themselves with no sense of gratitude and 
fellowship toward the toihng men and women who bring 
these gifts; with no strenuous effort to give back to them 
something as valuable and precious as that which they 
have given to us, — that is the meanness and selfishness 
and sin and shame of wealth that is idle and irresponsible. 

The rich Christian is God's finest masterpiece in the 
world to-day. The man whose office is a pivot around 
which revolve in integrity and beneficence the wheels 
of industry and commerce, affording employment and 



N 



HARRY PRATT JUDSON 253 

subsistence to thousands of his fellows; the woman whose 
home is a center of generous hosfiitality, whence ceaseless 
streams of refinement and charity flow forth to bless the 
world; the person whose leisure and culture and wealth 
and influence are devoted to the direction of forces, the 
solution of problems, the organization of movements 
which require large expenditure of time and money — 
these men and women who are at the same time rich and 
Christian, these are the salt of our modern society; by 
such comes the redemption of the world; of such, no less 
than of the Christian poor, is the kingdom of heaven. No 
honest man grudges these Christian rich their wealth. 
It matters not whether their income is five hundred or 
fifty thousand a year. The question is whether the little 
or the much is made organic to the glory of God and the 
good of humanity. 



LEADERSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY 

HARRY PRATT JUDSON 

President of the University of Chicago 

(Condensed from an address delivered upon the occasion of 
conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws on President Roosevelt, 
at the University of Chicago, April, 2, 1903.) 

There can be no coherent poUcy in a democracy with- 
out continuous and strong leadership. Democracy, to 
live, must learn the lesson of discipline, the lesson to 
follow in constructive achievement as well as in turbulent 
revolt. Without wise leadership political democracy 



2S4 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

tends to resolve society into its inorganic elements. It 
becomes an inert mass of helpless confusion — the easy 
prey of predatory activity within, and of exploitation by 
organized and skilfully directed force from without. 

Leadership in a political democracy is not always the 
product of elections or the concomitant of official station. 
Natural environment, energy, circumstance — these mark 
the true leader. Buchanan was President, to be sure — 
as an energizing force he was a lump of clay. Lincoln 
was a directive power which struck disunion with the 
united energy of twenty milUon people. The poUtical 
boss is not a mere malign accident. He is a born leader 
of men behind whom a multitude gather because he is 
the man who knows how, and the man who can do. 
He cannot be dislodged by elegant rhetoric or by a fusil- 
lade of righteous indignation. He may be supplanted 
by another man who also knows how, and who also can 
do, but in more abundant measure. In short, in poHtics, 
force must become incarnate in order to lead to achieve- 
ment. "Peace on earth and good- will to men" would 
be but the platitude o£ philosophers were it not for the 
realization in the flesh of a personality which has con- 
strained men for ages. Truth has won no battles, justice 
has created no social safety, righteousness is imbecile, 
except as one and all are incarnate in forceful men. 

It is such men in whom lies the hope of poHtical democ- 
racy. Their essence is simple and yet complex. Brains ? 
Surely; there is no magnetism in a political cabbage. 
Courage? It is the elemental qualities which win the 
people — all men love a gallant fight against odds, and 
the man who dares, the man who believes in himself so 
thoroughly that he may be crushed, indeed, but never 



HARRY PRATT JUDSON 255 

yields, he is the man whom we all love. Lawrence, with 
his "Don't give up the ship"; Paul Jones, with his "I 
have just begun to fight"; Croghan, with his "Come and 
take me"; Old Hickory, with his toast at the nullification 
banquet, "The Federal Union: it must be preserved" — 
these are the men whose names thrill the American. 
Honesty ? An elemental quality again — we love the 
fearless man, we trust the transparent soul — we know 
where to find it always. Lincoln won universal faith 
because he was honest to the core; the people believed 
that what he said that he meant, and were sure that he 
would do, within the limits of his power, exactly what he 
promised. 

But even with these strong qualities one may still 
fail in that inexplicable something which determines the 
magnetic power of a true leader of the people — the 
something which makes a Jefferson, a Jackson, a Henry 
Clay, a Lincoln, a McKinley. There is a potency in 
persuasiveness, in practicability, which the more rugged 
fighter often lacks. The giant Antaeus, son of earth, lost 
his strength and was easily crushed by Hercules when 
his feet left the ground. A popular leader who loses 
touch with the people is a mere dreamer of dreams. His 
voice no longer directs thought — he merely preaches to 
the air. 

There was a day when the absolute monarch seemed 
the ideal of human greatness. The names of such are 
scattered throughout time — but their age has vanished. 
The masses below have surged to the surface — they will 
not be denied — the age before us is the age of the free 
and aspiring many. In such an age the strong man is 
the leader of thought. He wins following by the con- 



256 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

straint of a powerful mind and a virile character. He 
appeals to reason and to the higher emotions. He looks 
far into the future, and his constructive imagination is a 
lens through which the people may see clearly things as 
they are and as they are to be. His quaUties must be 
higher than those of a despot. The freely followed leader 
of a free people is greater far than emperor or king. 



GOOD CITIZENSHIP 

ST. CLAIR McKELWAY 
Editor of "The Brooklyn Eagle ^* 

(Extract from an address to the Young Men's Hebrew Associa- 
tion, New York city, October 17, 1909.) 

The open secret of good citizenship is the open secret 
of all other good. It is to do the thing nearest to you 
thoroughly and well. A reversal of the entire usage of 
our poHtical estimates should be had. The most impor- 
tant officer to a citizen is the officer who can make life 
hard or easy, fair or unjust to him. That officer is 
neither President nor governor nor mayor. It is alder- 
man or member of the municipal council or supervisor, 
no matter what the name of the functionary. And the 
officer next in importance and power in his abiHty to 
affect the life of the citizen is the police or civil justice. 
And after those who have been named is the mayor 
or municipal chief magistrate. Good citizenship should 
mean good government if it means anything. Good 
government must begin with good home government or 



ST. CLAIR McKELWAY 257 

it will rarely get beyond it. Parties are men bunched. 
The citizen is the unit. The home is the basis of the 
state as well as of the Church. It is the heart of both, 
and out of the heart are the issues of life for good or ill. 
If our local governments are bad, our state governments 
will be good, if at all, by chance or accident. 

If our city, our village, our county, or our township 
be badly governed, not only will our states be badly 
ruled, and our nation badly served, but our new colonies, 
of which the acquisition and the management entrance, 
while they appal, the imagination of our people, will be 
corruptly handled. Let it be understood that I am an 
expansionist because what I believe to be good for America 
I beHeve to be good for the world, and what I beheve 
Americans have done and can do for themselves, that I 
beheve they can do by, for, with, and through all other 
races. But because I am an expansionist, I am, if I 
may make the word, a localist hkewise, and intensely 
so. Only as we make our communities and our coun- 
tries what they should be shall we make our colonies, 
our provinces, or our dependencies what they ought to 
be. We shall be no better to ourselves than we are in 
ourselves. We shall be no better to others than we are 
to ourselves. The moral hghts which throw on our own 
path will be the fire from which we shall kindle the light 
for the path which we carve out for others. As our 
communities and commonwealths are, so will our colonies 
be. And as we make ourselves, so will we make others. 

Of this leavening Americanism I have strong hopes. 
Its essence and its impulse are in that good citizenship 
beginning in each man's case with himself and extending 
from him to neighbor and neighbor, and thence through 



258 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

community, commonwealth, and republic. I foresee and 
I forefeel the time when, under good citizenship in the 
real sense, an Americanized continent shall contemplate 
and inspire an Americanized world. Not a world or 
continents under single or similar control, but with 
governments moralized and spiritualized with the prin- 
ciple of liberty, equality, justice, and opportunity, regu- 
lated by righteous law and inspired by a righteous people, 
loving right, hating evil, helping the weak, restraining 
the strong, and restoring humanity to the plane of human 
brotherhood whereon it shall walk hand in hand with 
the Divine Fatherhood. If this be an error, as I believe 
it is not, it is an error which I revere. If this be a delu- 
sion, as I think it is not, it is a delusion on which I hope 
my dying eyes may look with faith in the conviction that 
it shall yet enwrap the world within its angelic form. 



THE NEW POLITICS 

JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN 
President of Cornell University 

(From an address before the Religious Education Association, 
at Rochester, New York, February 7, 1907.) 

For a long time political parties and bosses have inter- 
cepted the outgoings of patriotism by standing between 
patriotism and the commonwealth. To-day it is clear 
that the commonwealth and not the party is the end of 
patriotism, and patriotism has free scope to go out toward 
its own high object. If poHtical parties are to regain 



JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN 259 

vigorous life — as I expect to see them regain it — it 
will be by recognizing themselves as instruments for 
the pubhc good and not in themselves of any value as 
mere agencies to win elections. 

This fundamental political awakening which I have 
described has for its platform the new or world-old prin- 
ciple of justice and the "square deal." It insists that 
all men shall be equal before the law. It claims equality 
of opportunity. It is at war with vested rights and 
favored classes. It protests against government as a 
partnership of the strong for the exploitation of the weak. 
It recognizes that evils, poHtical as well as individual, 
have their root and abiding source in human nature. 
But it holds that the poUtical ills from which we suffer 
may be remedied by laws impartially just and adminis- 
tration absolutely honest. It reveres the majesty of the 
law and pays homage to our courts of justice and the 
incorruptibility of their judges. But it is deeply per- 
suaded that in the executive and legislative branches of 
our government power and wealth have had undue influ- 
ence, often unconscious and unintentional rather than 
dehberate, but an influence nevertheless which works 
substantial hardship to large classes of our people. And 
it welcomes every measure of redress which, Hke recent 
federal legislation, tends to protect the people against 
monopolistic corporations which have it in their power 
to practise oppression. 

Justice is the fundamental characteristic of the state. 
The realization of justice may be said to be the end of 
all legislation and all administration. And justice is the 
platform of the poUtical movement I have described — 
justice in all things, to all parties, and in all circumstances. 



26o AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

The time is coming when not only trusts, but also the 
tariiff and all other objects of legislation, will be reexam- 
ined in the light of justice and fair play to all classes of 
citizens. 

The new politics demands new leaders. Bosses are 
out of date. The need of to-day is not of mechanicians 
to run a machine, but of statesmen to voice the aspira- 
tions of a free and enlightened people and administrators 
to execute them with absolute honesty and devotion to 
public duty as soon as they have been enacted into law. 
It is an old saying that occasion breeds the men. This 
truth I find illustrated before our own eyes. If the 
public service of our day calls for men of clarity of vision, 
of sanity of judgment, of integrity of purpose, men of 
this type are not lacking. We have them in Folk at 
the capital in Missouri, in Bryan on his Nebraskan farm, 
in Hughes at the executive mansion in Albany, and, most 
illustrious of all, in Roosevelt at the White House in 
Washington. In all the years in which I have watched 
public affairs I have never known a time or a country 
in which the demands of the age and the expectations 
of the pubHc challenged so potently all that is best and 
highest in the minds of young men who would serve the 
public. 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 261 



DEMOCRACY 

NICHOLAS MUREAY BUTLER 

President of Columbia University 

(From an address delivered at the University of California, 
March 23, 1909.) 

In each of the progressive nations of the earth it is 
clearly recognized that the pressing questions of the 
moment are not so much poUtical, in the narrow sense, 
as they are economic and social. In Germany, in France, 
in England, in Italy, in Japan, and in our own country 
parhaments and legislatures are busying themselves with 
these newer problems, the common characteristic of which 
is that they appear to involve in their solution a vast and 
rapid extension of the field in which men work collectively 
through their poHtical agents, rather than individually 
through their own wills and hands. 

We Americans approach these present-day problems 
in the spirit of democracy, and with more than a century 
of schooHng in democracy behind us; but are we quite 
sure that we know what democracy means and impHes? 
For there is a democracy false and a democracy true, 
and it is just when the economic or social problem presses 
hardest for solution that the sharp contrast between the 
two is lost sight of and the Une which divides them is 
blurred. 

Was Lord Byron right when he cried, "What is democ- 
racy? An aristocracy of blackguards!" or was the 
truth not with Mazzini, who defined democracy as 
*'the progress of all through all, under the leadership of 



262 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the best and wisest"? Everything depends upon the 
answer. 

The state is founded upon justice, and justice involves 
hberty, and Hberty denies economic equaUty; because 
equaHty of abihty, of efficiency, and even of physical 
force are unknown among men. To secure an equaHty 
which is other than the political equality incident to 
liberty, the more efficient must be shackled that they 
may not outrun the less efficient, for there is no known 
device by which the less efficient can be spurred on to 
equal the accomphshment of the more efficient. Objec- 
tive conditions must, of course, be equaHzed, particularly 
those conditions which are created by the state. But this 
is true not because such an equaUty is an end in itself, 
but because it is essential to liberty. True democracy 
rejects the doctrine that mediocrity is a safeguard for 
liberty, and points to the fact that the only serious menace 
of liberty comes from the predominance of monopoly, of 
privilege, and of majorities. True democracy holds fast 
to the notion that fixed standards of right and wrong 
are necessary to its success and that no resting place 
is to be found in the verdict of authorities, of majorities, 
or of custom. It believes that nothing is settled until 
it is settled right, and that no fear of majorities and 
no threats of the powerful should for an instant be 
allowed to check the agitation to right a wrong or to 
remedy an abuse. 

What Burke says of Parliament is equally true of the 
American Congress and of American state legislatures. 
Their one proper concern is the interest of the whole 
body politic, and the true democratic representative is 
not the cringing, fawning tool of the caucus or of the 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 263 

mob, but he who, rising to the full stature of poKtical 
manhood, does not take orders, but ofifers guidance. 

Ever since the Civil War the Congress has steadily 
invaded the province of the President, and has long 
been arrogantly asserting control over his administrative 
acts. At the moment it is being urged to invade the 
prerogatives of the judiciary and to curtail and regulate 
the proceedings in equity of the United States courts — 
a field in which the Congress has the same right and 
authority that it has in Korea or in British India, no 
more and no less. This invasion of the executive and 
judicial powers by the legislature is accompanied by an 
effort to convince the people at large that the executive 
power is in some subtle way antagonistic to democracy, 
and, moreover, that the executive is invading or has 
invaded the province of the legislature. This latter cry, 
as insincere as it is false, is invariably raised whenever 
it is desired to distract public attention from an invasion 
of the executive by the legislature, or when some private 
or privileged interest wishes to ward off from itself the 
execution of the people's laws. As a matter of fact, if 
our American poUtical experience proves anything, it 
proves that the executive branch of the Government is 
the most efficient representative and spokesman that the 
popular will has. So it was with Lincoln in the Civil 
War; so it was with Cleveland in the struggle for a sound 
monetary system; so it is with Roosevelt in the battle 
against privilege and greed. 



264 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



OUR CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM 

WILLIAM BOURKE COCKEIAN 

Congressman from New York 

(From a speech delivered at a banquet of the New England Society 
of the city of Brooklyn December 21, 1889.) 

I HAVE been assigned the subject of "Our Constitutional 
System as Tested by a Century." What is this constitu- 
tional system? Does it consist of executive officers, 
clothed with extraordinary powers, beside which the meager 
prerogatives of constitutional monarchs shrink into insig- 
nificance? Does it consist of a judiciary armed with 
power over life, limb, and property? Does it consist of 
legislators, that they may be enabled and authorized to 
prefix the title "Honorable" to their names? Does it 
consist of the mere parchment upon which certain figures 
may be traced and certain words may be read ? No ! 
Our constitutional system consists of the application of 
the eternal principles of justice to the relations of men 
to each other under our social compact. In the provi- 
sions that no man can be deprived of life, liberty, or 
property without due process of law; that all men shall 
take an equal part in the affairs of government; that the 
privilege of habeas corpus shall never be denied; that no 
private property shall be taken for public uses without 
proper compensation, — you have the essence of our 
constitutional system, and you have the principles of 
justice made the birthright of the American citizen, 
beyond the disturbance from any source whatever. You 
have the rule of equity applied to your every-day exist- 



WILLIAM BOURKE COCKRAN 265 

ence. You have rights guaranteed to every citizen which 
the strongest may not invade, which the weakest is free 
to invoke for his own protection. 

If we are asked what have been the practical effects of 
this constitutional system, we have but to tell our ques- 
tioner to look around him. In the sight which will meet 
his eye will be found the answer to his question. On 
every hand we see liberty and order, prosperity and 
happiness. We see fields radiant with prosperity, homes 
on every hillside, where the fires of Hberty are kept ahve 
on the hearthstones; neither fortress nor arsenal casting 
its grim shadow across the highway; laws dictated by 
public opinion and obeyed by universal consent. 

It may be that all things human are ephemeral; it 
may be that this Government, which we love so well and 
in whose future we believe so deeply, will be found at 
the dawn of some day to have disappeared. And yet 
I feel justified in believing that, as the principles of jus- 
tice are eternal, the government which is founded upon 
them will last forever. Not as she stands to-day; I 
know that nothing in nature can remain inert; but I 
believe she will live to the end of time, forever progressive, 
ever freer, ever greater, ever stronger, ever more durable. 
I believe that with each successive force which is liberated 
from nature; with each new development of science; with 
each new element that may enter into the daily lives 
of men, creating vast additions to our wealth, annihi- 
lating space and multiplying the fields of industry, our 
constitutional system will be found elastic enough 
to include them, strong enough to regulate them; 
and that our American democracy will continue to 
maintain institutions which will stimulate patriotism, 



266 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

strengthen virtue, and illuminate the world with the light 
of freedom, revealing Uberty hand in hand with order 
and prosperity. 



IRISH INFLUENCE IN AMERICA 

WALLACE McCAMANT 
0/ the Portland, Oregon, Bar 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a public meeting held in 
Portland, Oregon, July 24, 1904, in introducing Hon. Conor O'Kelley, 
Member of Parhament from Ireland.) 

For two hundred years Ireland has been infusing her 
brain and brawn into the American body poUtic. There 
are far more men of Irish blood in America than in 
Ireland itself. The population of Ireland is only five mil- 
lion; in the United States there are not less than fifteen 
million of Irish birth or extraction. 

In every crisis of American history men of Irish blood 
have wrought mightily for the upbuilding of the American 
commonwealth. Long prior to the battle of Lexington, 
years before the Declaration of Independence, we find 
men of Irish blood meeting in county after county of 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the CaroUnas to hold up the 
hands of the patriot leaders; always in the van of public 
opinion, always bravely proclaiming the principles for 
which as free men they were ready to fight and die. 
Men of Irish blood proclaimed the Mecklenburg declara- 
tion of independence, defended the rail fence at Bunker 
Hill, made up the rank and file of the victorious armies 
which at King's Mountain and the Cowpens rolled back 



WALLACE McCAMANT 267 

the tide of invasion in the South. So predominant were 
they in the various regiments of the Pennsylvania line 
that "Light-Horse Harry" Lee said, "These detachments 
had better have been called the hne of Ireland." It is 
significant of their trustworthiness and fidelity that when 
Washington was apprized of the treason of Benedict 
Arnold, when he knew not whom to trust, he at once 
sent for the Pennsylvania line, commanded by Anthony 
Wayne, the grandson of a Wicklow County Irishman, to 
occupy West Point. These troops were at Haverstraw, 
distant sixteen miles from West Point, and Washington's 
message reached them at one in the morning. By two 
o'clock they were on the march. At six a.m. they reached 
West Point, and Washington breathed freely in the 
confidence that the Gibraltar of the Hudson was safe. 

Irish brawn has built the great railroads which bind 
the east to the west and the north to the south. Irish 
brain governs a majority of our municipalities. Men of 
Irish blood have been the dominant ethnic strain in that 
hardy race of pioneers who, throughout American history, 
have been found on the frontiers of civilization, with ax 
on one shoulder and rifle on the other, their faces turned 
steadily to the west. The development of the great West, 
with its harvest of benefit for the American people, has 
been made possible by a liberal system of land laws, 
which are chiefly the result of the consecrated statesman- 
ship of that great leader of the Irish blood, Thomas H. 
Benton, of Missouri. 

The great lesson of history is the beneficence of evil. 
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The 
tortures of the Spanish inquisition are the birth pangs of 
the great Dutch republic. "Without shedding of blood 



268 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

there is no remission of sins." The guilt of slavery was 
not to be washed away without the bloodshed of Bull 
Run, Shiloh, and Gettysburg. From the carnage and 
disorder of our great Civil War we have seen the American 
repubHc arise to higher ideals and enlarged usefulness. 

May we not find in this thought a key to the divine 
plan in the history of Ireland? It was written in the 
eternal decrees that for two centuries men of Irish blood 
should turn their faces westward across the Atlantic; 
that their arms of brawn should carve homes out of the 
wilderness; that the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence should be burned in upon their souls, and that 
their hearts, burning with indignation at injustice in the 
Emerald Isle, should be true as steel to the great move- 
ments making for Hberty and fraternity among the 
American people. Without absentee landlords, evictions, 
famine, pestilence, industrial and religious persecution, 
these things could not have been. Without this Irish 
immigration no King's Moimtain, no New Orleans, no 
Anthony Wayne, no Andrew Jackson, no Phil Sheridan, 
no Ulysses S. Grant. Without this immigration who can 
tell how American history would read? 

"God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform." 

In His providence the woes of Ireland have been over- 
ruled for the advantage of the American people. 



FRANK J. SULLIVAN 269 



A MESSAGE FROM IRELAND 

FRANK J. SULLIVAN 
Of the San Francisco Bar 

(The concluding part of an address on "The Influence of the 
Gaelic Tongue on the Common Law of England and America," 
delivered at San Francisco October 4, 1908, under the auspices of 
the Gaelic League of California.) 

You remember when Patrick had fled from Ireland and 
was again a free man in his own dear native land his 
sleep was continually disturbed by innumerable messages 
from the Irish people. He fancied he heard the voices 
of those who were in the wood of Fochlut, which borders 
on the western sea, crying out: "We entreat thee, holy 
youth, to come and walk among us." Tell me, brothers 
and sisters of the Gael, is there now no message from the 
hills and valleys of the green isle? Yes — every round 
tower and dismantled abbey, every ivy-grown castle, 
every cromlech and cairn, beg you and me to remember 
the glorious past of Erin. 

Is there one among us who has not heard the sound 
of ancient Irish music from every dell in that fairy land ? 
Even now the voices of our ancestors fall softly and 
sweetly on our ears. Even now the spirits of the mighty 
dead, whose steel has gUttered on every battle-field of 
Europe and America, call on us to give back to Ireland 
her language and her freedom. Even now the great 
Irish apostles of Scotland and of England and of France, 
of Germany and Iceland rise from their graves to swell 
the diapason of the music of the Irish nation's heart. 



270 MIERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Even now the streams and the rivulets of Erin mingle 
their silvery notes T\dth the deep tones of the waves of 
great ocean to welcome the dawn of a new life for the 
ancient tongue of Ireland. 

Ay, from all these we catch the murmurs of the chorus 
of the great amen ! From Ireland's seas and clouds, from 
Ireland's sunshine, and from Ireland's storms comes the 
ceaseless prayer: Give us back the language of youthful 
Ireland, the island of saints and scholars; the island which 
alone preserved the arts and sciences and the Christian 
faith undefiled by the rude touch of armed barbarians. 
Give us back the GaeHc tongue which civilized Europe 
— that tongue of which an Irish monarch wrote sixteen 
centuries ago: 

"Sweet tongue of our Druids, our bards of past ages; 
Sweet tongue of our monarchs, our saints, and our sages; 
Sweet tongue of oui heroes and free-bom sires — 
When we cease to preserve thee our glory expires." 



SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN 

ANNA H. SHAW 
President of the National Suffrage Association 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, 
Chautauqua, New York, August 25, 1909.) 

If a democracy is a government by the people, and 
if a repubHc is a representative democracy, then there 
is no such thing in our country except in the four states 
where both men and women elect their representatives. 
In all the other states government is by an aristocracy 



ANNA H. SHAW 271 

of sex, for there can be neither repubHc nor democracy 
where one fraction of the people governs another fraction. 

The anti-suffragists assert that woman is virtually 
represented, but I beHeve with Adams and Otis that 
there can be no such thing as virtual representation in 
government; the people actually voting must be author- 
ized to represent the others. 

The opponents of suffrage urge that suffrage never 
will come because it has already been voted down many 
times. So it has been voted down, but so also would the 
ten commandments be voted do^vn in the state of New 
York! The value of the movement does not depend 
upon whether it is voted up or voted down; its impor- 
tance depends on whether it is fundamentally right or 
not, and the heart of the himian race is bound to be ulti- 
mately fundamentally right. 

To the frequent objection that women are not fitted 
for the suffrage, I answer that they are better fitted for 
it than any class of men in this coimtry have been at the 
time that the suffrage was given to them. The negro, 
the laboring man, the Revolutionary soldiers at the time 
of their enfranchisement showed only a small proportion 
who could read and write. 

It is often insisted that the reason why men vote is 
because they fight, yet the only men who are prohibited 
from voting are the men in the regular army! 

Why should a feeble man vote because some other 
man can fight ? The right should be given to the mother 
of the fighting man. A democracy does not rest on 
force. It never did and it never mil. Rather does it 
rest on the education of its people for righteousness, 
which Carlyle declared was a democracy's only hope. 



272 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Democracy stands for three things: the right of every 
human being to earn an honest Hving, the right of the 
individual to reach his highest development, and the 
right of the individual to serve the community in citizen- 
ship. Woman should have her chance at each one of 
these aspects of democracy, and the ballot will gain the 
chance for her. If a thousand years without the ballot 
has made her only the "lovely, incapable" creature that 
she is declared to be, then by all means let us see what 
the ballot can do for her. Doing creates fitness. 

Men and women have their respective duties of father- 
hood and motherhood, but between the extremes they 
may meet in education, in social service, and in govern- 
ment for the help of both men and women. 

The ideals of democracy of to-morrow will apply the 
principles of democracy of to-day, and to-morrow there 
is bound to come the true representative democracy 
wherein every member of society has his and her part. 



WOMAN AND THE SUFFRAGE 

LYMAN ABBOTT 

(The concluding part of an address on "Motherhood," published 
in The Outlook of April lo, 1909.) 

Perhaps the argument which has been most effective 
to counterbalance the objection of women to assume the 
responsibilities of the suffrage has been the argument 
that they could vote for the abolition of the saloon. In 
the ancient legend St. George rescues the maiden from 



LYMAN ABBOTT 273 

the dragon. I confess that I have small sympathy with 
the spirit which calls on the maiden to fight the dragon 
and leaves St. George on the other side of the wall look- 
ing on to see how the conflict will terminate. The women 
who are affected by this argument, and perhaps the 
women who use it, forget that Hebrew history had a 
Jezebel as well as a Queen Esther, and European history 
a Lucretia Borgia and a Catherine de Medici as well 
as a Queen Victoria. Vice, ignorance, and superstition 
are not confined to either sex. Advocates of woman's 
suffrage aver improvement of conditions in woman suf- 
frage states; opponents of woman's suffrage aver deteri- 
orated conditions in woman suffrage states. Into the 
contention between these two classes of observers, each 
of whom probably see what they wish to see, I decline 
to enter. I accept instead the testimony of such impar- 
tial observers as the President of the United States, who 
has said: ''I am unable to see that there has been any 
special improvement in the position of women in those 
states in the West that have adopted woman suffrage as 
compared with those states adjoining them that have not 
adopted it. I do not think that giving the women suf- 
frage will produce any marked improvement in the con- 
dition of women." I accept the testimony of Mr. Root, 
in a published letter from him based on his certainly large 
opportunities for a study of this question: ''I do not 
myself consider that the granting of suffrage to women 
would, under the existing conditions, be any improve- 
ment in our system of government. On the contrary, 
I think it would rather reduce than increase the electoral 
efficiency of our people." I accept the testimony of 
Mr. James Bryce, as disinterested, impartial, and sym- 



274 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

pathetic an observer of American conditions as America 
has ever known: *'No evidence has come in my way 
tending to show that pohtics either in Wyoming or in 
Washington are in any way purer than in the adjoining 
states and territories. The most that seems to be alleged 
is that they are no worse; or, as the Americans express 
it, 'Things are very much what they were before, only 
more so.'" This was published in 1888. It is safe to 
say that nothing has occurred within the last twenty 
years materially to change this judgment. 

President Roosevelt, in his address before the Mothers' 
Meeting in Washington in 1905, said, "The primary 
duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the bread- 
winner for his wife and children; the primary duty of the 
woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife, and mother." 
In these words Mr. Roosevelt has gone to the heart of 
the woman question. The call to woman to leave her 
duty to take up man's duties is an impossible call. The 
call on man to impose on woman his duty, in addition 
to hers, is an unjust call. Fathers, husbands, brothers, 
speaking for the silent women, I claim for them the right 
to be exempt in the future from the burden from which 
they have been exempt in the past. Mothers, wives, 
sisters, I urge you not to allow yourselves to be enticed 
into assuming functions for which you have no inclina- 
tion, by appeals to your spirit of self-sacrifice. Woman's 
instinct is the star that guides her to her divinely 
appointed life, and it guides to the manger where an 
infant is laid. 



JOHN H. VINCENT 275 



THE GIRL IN THE KITCHEN 

JOHN H. VINCENT 

Chancellor of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Association 

(Condensed from an address before the Woman's Club, Chau- 
tauqua, New York, July 13, 1909.) 

There are many fields of service in life. We call them 
trades, pursuits, professions, callings. These demand a 
variety of gifts and talents — and of processes prepara- 
tory. Some require head work, others dexterity, tact, 
genius. At the root of all attempt and achievement is 
manual labor — the house to be built, the ground cul- 
tivated, implements manufactured, food provided; and 
then come merchandizing, banking, civil and political 
devisings, and for all — education. It is a busy world. 
The measure of value is not alone in time spent nor 
physical energy expended. Much depends on faculty and 
quality of energy required, natural endowment, tact, 
ability, as when an artist paints a picture worth one 
thousand or ten thousand dollars, the canvas is not 
expensive, nor the pigments; the value is in the soul of 
the artist. Much also depends on the ruling motive 
which is really the measure of merit. One artist paints a 
picture that, by the money he gains for it, he may live 
in luxurious ease and sensual gratification. Here a ser- 
vant girl earns money by hard toil to help her brother 
through college. 

One of our most important modem contributors to 
civilization is the "girl in the kitchen." She may be 
a drudge or she may be a queen — all depends upon 



276 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

her own keynote — her motive, her ideal, her ruling 
purpose. 

The girl in the kitchen should be the domestic artist 
of the house, — a queen of domestic science, respecting 
herself because she follows a profession that contributes 
to the highest social conditions, to physical life, to the 
gratification of appetite, and really to the fine arts as 
well. She should be a lady in the highest sense of that 
title as appUed to an honorable, sensible, genuine ambi- 
tious woman who is not ashamed to earn her own Hving 
in an honorable way. She should represent not a "social 
class, but a "profession," and take her social position 
according to the quaUty of her personality and not accord- 
ing to the effete distinctions of a social order — an order 
we ought by this time to have outgrown. 

Let us train our girls and boys to love home, to honor 
industry, to put a true estimate on neatness and taste, 
on economy and common sense, to respect everybody 
who believes in self-support, to treat servants with cour- 
tesy and kindness, to honor a lady, whether dressed in 
satin or linsey-woolsey; whether seated at the table or 
serving those who are seated at it; and who remember 
the real measure of individual worth as God estimates 
it and as the common sense of society judges it. Jesus 
washed the feet of his disciples one day — to take 
down their false pride and lift the social ideals to higher 
levels for all the ages. Let our new civihzation take 
a step forward, and value at her real worth the girl in 
the kitchen. 



HOMER T. WILSON 277 



AMERICA'S UNCROWNED QUEEN 

HOMER T. WILSON 
A popular Southern lecturer now residing at San Antonio, Texas 

(The conclusion of a lecture delivered many times from the 
lyceimi platform.) 

I ONCE looked upon England's Queen, as she passed 
through the beautiful park in front of Buckingham 
Palace. I bared my head and in silence contemplated 
that noble woman. On her brow there was a crown 
brighter and more dazzHng than the crown of state. 
On her person there was a robe ornamented with the 
flowers of unfading beauty. All hail to England's Chris- 
tian Queen! After the grand procession passed by, I 
stood beneath an ancient Enghsh oak, and my mind 
crossed the sea to my old Kentucky home so far away. 
It was even time. The evening lessons were finished. 
The wife and mother read a chapter from the story of 
redeeming love. The little ones bowed with her at the 
same altar. I heard her pray, "Father in heaven, watch 
over us while we slumber, and keep us from all harm." 
I heard her when she said, "O God, protect the absent 
one and bring him safely across the sea." The tears 
unbidden started down my cheek, and I said: "All hail 
to the queen of my own precious home! On your brow 
there is a crown of unfading beauty, on your person 
there is a robe ornamented with the flowers of unfading 
beauty. All hail to the queen of my home!" 

If I could walk through the floral gardens of the world 
and pluck the flowers of rarest beauty and sweetest per- 



278 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

fume, and then select from the crowns of kings and queens 
the rarest jewels that ghsten there, I would fashion them 
into a more beauteous crown, and with the hand of love 
I would place that crown upon the brow of the mother 
— America's uncrowned queen. 



EARNESTNESS AND THOROUGHNESS 

LEON HARRISON 
Rabbi of Temple Israel, St. Louis 

(Extract from a discourse before Temple Israel, St. Louis, Feb- 
ruary 5, 1909.) 

Our besetting vice as a nation is superficiality. Our 
crjdng need is seriousness, thoroughness, earnestness. 
And this by no means implies melancholy, or severity, or 
sour remmciation. Indeed the really great himiorists of 
the world have been the mighty thinkers, whose profound 
insight could see and grasp the many humors of men. 
The grim Carlyle was such a one; and Jean Paul Richter, 
and our Dickens and Thackeray, and George Ehot, and 
tender and exquisite Charles Lamb. In all of them the 
tears lay very near the surface, — close to the smiles. 
They all could see the sunbeams dance upon the waters, 
for they had sounded also the vast depths beneath. 

I ask for earnestness where it fits, and where it counts. 
I invite attention to the fact that life is not a farce, or 
a sorry jest, but a drama of infinite moment, in which 
we, the players, are also the playwrights and the heroes. 
It is our first and last performance, without rehearsal or 



LEON HARRISON 279 

correction or power to change a single word or act, and 
the verdict is final. It oppresses me, — this sense that 
we are spending not our interest but our capital, that 
our life is shrinking, visibly, tangibly, and we have not 
yet struck the blow that was worth while, we have not 
yet lived, perchance not a single vivid immortal moment. 
And we need to learn this supreme lesson at once, and 
practise it forthwith while we stiU may; and thereby 
we will gain the deepest and worthiest satisfaction in 
Hf e — namely, that we have grown, that we have gone 
on from strength to strength, that our building was 
soHd, four-square, and true. 

For there are at bottom but two grand divisions of 
men: those whose life is a makeshift, a poHcy of drift, 
a sequence of accidents, beaded together a Httle by 
selfishness and greed and the struggle for existence — 
whose life is simply this and nothing more — and those 
whose life is a plan, a dehberate endeavor to reach a 
goal, though it means persistence, sacrifice, hardship, 
and long-continued and difficult effort; following a star 
too often against head winds, and a star cloud-covered, 
too, and invisible. 

Now there are various fruitful applications of this cen- 
tral thought, in its different aspects, to the entire range 
of human activity. 

How it helps us, in the first place, to solve the problem 
of the method and the chief end of education. What is 
that method and chief end? Is it not that men may 
learn to think in earnest, to study in earnest ? And what 
that impUes is very obvious. It impHes an intellectual 
conscience, as it were; a seriousness of purpose and of 
method. It demands above all a quality that is far from 



28o AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

being cultivated in America, at our institutions of learn- 
ing, as it should be; it demands thoroughness. 

There are many young men, aye and older men too, 
who do not know what working in dead earnest means. 
They complain of being under a cloud; but they are 
darkened by their own shadow. They work with their 
eyes on the clock. They are afraid to work too long, or 
too much, or too well. They are afraid that they will 
earn more than their salaries. But the ten-doUar-a- 
week clerk who is afraid of earning more than that sum 
will always be a ten-dollar-a-week clerk. For your work 
can mark your growth and make your growth; it can 
become a strength-giving and a pride. Nay, it may 
become your game and sport in its increasing excellence. 
For in a fine and worthy sense, the greatest game of all 
is this tense struggle with self and with rivals for superi- 
ority, for supremacy. Were this not graciously true, 
we would all be slaves in a bondage cruelly perennial 
and ubiquitous. 

Let us not "go out of the world in the world's debt, 
consuming much and producing nothing; nor sit down 
at the feast of life and go away without paying the 
reckoning." 

You will at least be yourself. You will be true to 
yourself, whether wreathed with laurels or with thorns. 

"They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee; 

Better men fared thus before thee; 

Fired their ringing shot and passed, 

Hotly charged, — and fell at last. 
"Charge once more, then, and be dumb! 

Let the victors, when they come, 

When the forts of folly fall, 

Find thy body by the wall." 



ALBERT B. CUMMINS 281 

THE "INSURGENT" REPUBLICANS: A REPLY 
TO SPEAKER CANNON 

ALBERT B. CUMMINS 

United States Senator from Iowa 

(Extract from a speech delivered before the Marquette Club, 
at Chicago, November 9, 1909.) 

A MONTH ago a distinguished son of Illinois came to 
Iowa obviously angry and therefore in one of his hysterical 
moods. He made a speech ostensibly in defense of the 
rules of the House of Representatives, but which was, 
in fact, an assault upon those who had opposed the 
RepubUcan majority in Congress upon the tariff measure. 
Not content with burning us at the stake, he scattered 
our ashes to the four winds in order to make sure that 
we would be lost to the RepubHcan party forever and ever. 
Warming to his work, he made another speech a few 
days ago at Elgin, in which he repeated in all the colors 
of his rainbow phraseology the denunciation of those 
who committed the horrid crime of voting against the 
tariff bill, and again consigned them to the lowest depths 
of Democratic perdition; and then to completely satisfy 
his lust for blood he assigned to Senator La FoUette and 
myself a superheated chamber in this region of the damned. 
With all these imprecations, expulsions, and extermina- 
tions still ringing in my ears, I feel like a member of the 
fated brigade of which the poet sang: 

"Cannon to the right of them, 
Cannon to the left of them 
Volleyed and thundered." 



282 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

It may be, however, that I can summon enough composure 
and calm my shattered nerves sufficiently to lay before 
you some suggestions which appear to me to be pertinent 
upon the issue which has thus been raised. Let it be 
understood, once for all, that we accept the challenge 
and are ready for the fight. 

It will not avail Mr. Cannon and his associates any- 
thing to declare that we have joined hands with the 
Democratic party, for every intelligent man knows that 
this is simply an appeal to a bhnd passion and a senseless 
prejudice. The insurgents beHeve that the Repubhcan 
party is the best instrumentahty to secure and maintain 
good government. They are proud of its history, they 
love its traditions, and I venture the prediction that in 
the campaign of next year their voices will be heard 
high above all others defending its doctrines and sus- 
taining its candidates. Their struggle will be within the 
lines, but they will not hide the truth as they see it; 
for they know that if the Republican party is to be per- 
manently successful, it must be faithful to its platforms, 
and must meet courageously and justly the new age of 
commerce and business with its new problems and ques- 
tions. It cannot any longer be progressive in its plat- 
form and stand pat in its Congress. 

The crusade which I intend to strengthen with all my 
power is a crusade for a tariff commission — a perma- 
nent, dignified, and independent tariff commission; a 
tariff commission that will gather together the facts as 
to cost of production and lay them before Congress and 
the country. There are milHons of RepubHcans who 
believe that tariff duties should not substantially exceed 
the difference between the cost of producing things here 



JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 283 

and elsewhere with a fair profit added. I believe they 
constitute a large majority of the party; but if they do 
not, they will in the near future. They will never quit 
the fight until they win the victory, and I warn the men 
who are so vociferous in their decrees of expulsion that 
they had better conserve their strength for self-defense. 
They will need all they have, and more. 



AGAINST THE PAYNE-ALDRICH TARIFF BILL 

JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 

Late United States Senator from Iowa 

(Extract from speeches delivered in the Senate, 1909.) 

If anybody will look at the statistics he will be satis- 
fied that this tariff bill shows an increase of rates over 
those of the Dingley schedules. We have now four wit- 
nesses — the importer, the manufacturer, the statesman, 
and the statistician — and they unite in saying that the 
duties have been raised. But even with those four wit- 
nesses I would not dare to approach this subject on the 
floor of the Senate, owing to my want of confidence in 
various kinds of information, without going through the 
mill of the custom-house and applying these rates to the 
actual goods and merchandise. The science of logic must 
have reached a very unhappy state when that is regarded 
as a Hght form of evidence as to what this bill does to 
cotton goods. 

The Senator from Wisconsin took five samples of 
imported merchandise, all of the ordinary character of 



284 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

ladies' dress goods, to the custom-house in New York 
and had them assessed for duty, exactly as they would 
be assessed if introduced for the first time from a foreign 
country; and he stood on this floor, with the goods in 
his hand, and the Finance Committee in full retreat, and 
asked anybody to say whether that was not conclusive 
evidence of what the effect of this bill was upon actual 
cotton goods brought into this country. 

Some people laugh at that kind of an argument. They 
say it is the average we ought to look at. The average 
has nothing to do with it. Suppose there were three of 
us standing upon the street corner. I have had three 
square meals that day. You have had nothing to eat. 
Some cheerful statistician connected with the Department 
of Commerce and Labor or the Finance Committee of 
the Senate comes up with a pencil and undertakes to 
prove that we have had an average of one meal apiece. 
That situation has no sense in it, and it has no sense in 
it when, to a man complaining about duties being raised, 
it is said, "Oh, no; that is the average of 1907." Yet 
that is the exact sort of logic with which we were pre- 
sented not only the other day, but last night, with the 
galleries looking for light. 

I beg you, gentlemen, especially you young men, who 
will have to fight the battles of the RepubHcan party in 
the next twenty years, after a good many of the author- 
ities of to-day have disappeared from our affairs, not to 
degrade the Senate of the United States, a great dehber- 
ative body, able to cope with practical questions, to the 
level of an uneasy congregation of intellectual come-ons. 

Mr. President, I speak for a state that has never 
failed in its allegiance to the RepubHcan party. When 



JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 285 

Massachusetts was electing Benjamin F. Butler governor 
upon the Greenback ticket, the state of Iowa was firm 
in the RepubHcan faith. When the state of New York 
cast its electoral vote for Horatio Seymour against Ulysses 
S. Grant on a platform repudiating the pubKc debt, the 
state of Iowa was firm in the Republican faith. When 
the state of Pennsylvania put into her platform a demand 
for fifty dollars per capita of paper money manufactured 
by machinery, the state of Iowa was firm in the Repub- 
Hcan faith. And I do not propose to have the official 
organs of those who, out of the Senate Chamber, are 
writing these schedules and perpetuating them from one 
generation to another weaken the force of what I have 
tried to speak in behalf of the American people by false 
witness against the great commimity which has given me 
its confidence and its commission. 

I cannot support this measure because I am opposed 
to the methods by which it has been prepared. A dis- 
tinguished leader of the Senate in the course of the debate 
took occasion to say that nobody ought to speak dis- 
respectfully of the wool tariff, of Schedule K, because it 
was the "citadel of protection." I deny it. The citadel 
of protection is in the judgment and good sense of the 
American people from one ocean to the other. The citadel 
of protection is the right, which every American producer 
who invests his labor or his money in an industrial enter- 
prise has, of hving without being disturbed either in his 
employment or in his reasonable profit by the competi- 
tion flowing into our market-place from other lands. 
That is the citadel of protection, which I shall defend in 
the future, as I have in all the years of my life, against 
all its enemies. The "citadel of protection," of which 



286 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the senator from Rhode Island has so often spoken, is a 
fortress of cards. It will not be possible to perpetuate 
the protective-tariff system in the United States if local 
interests, favored by experienced leaders, are permitted 
to say, ''This is the citadel," and from it call out to 
everybody in the Senate and in the House of Representa- 
tives, "If you desire your constituents taken care of, 
make your terms with us." 

We have seen in this Congress a spectacle that has 
discouraged my heart, the spectacle of men being com- 
pelled to bargain with the authorities which control the 
Senate for the protection of the interests of their own 
people. 



TRIBUTE TO GOVERNOR JOHN A. JOHNSON 

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 

Former Governor of New York; now a member of the 
United States Supreme Court 

(Extract from an address delivered in New York city, November 
28, 1909, at a memorial service in honor of John A. Johnson, late 
Governor of Minnesota, — "a eulogy," according to the New York 
Tribune, "in which the speaker varied warm personal tribute with 
mention of the great public lessons of the Western statesman's 
career, holding an audience which packed the Broadway Tabernacle 
so intent that at its close they forgot, apparently, that they were 
in a church, and burst out in a storm of applause.") 

There is a vision before me of a gay party coming 
down from the lakes and the clouds at Lake Louis, in the 
Puget Sound country. The last in that party, the Gov- 
ernor of Minnesota, as I passed him on the way up the 



CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 287 

trail, said the last good-by. And I remember saying to 
myself as I left him, "There is a fine man — one of the 
finest men I have ever known." In respect and esteem 
for his character and services everyone united, without 
regard to social, racial, or poHtical division. 

The revelation of his progress from lowliness and obscu- 
rity to a place of high pubhc distinction is a benediction 
to the entire country. Once more we reaHze that our 
resources, our true resources of strength and of greatness, 
are not to be sought for in mine or field, but reside in 
man. When we take account of these resources we find 
once more impressing upon us that we are not to look 
exclusively to the favored home of exceptional oppor- 
timity; to sheltered childhood, to youth blessed with 
extraordinary advantages; to those upon whom fortune 
has smiled and who are led along the paths of life with 
constant counsel and ready inspiration. But we must 
take all America within our view — the homes of the 
poor, the imfortimate, those who seem thrust aside from 
the fair avenues of opportunity, those upon whom it 
would seem a bhght had rested at the very beginning 
of their career. 

Probably to-day in some lowly home, where there is 
the hardest work to achieve even a decent support, where 
some Httle lad is looking out on life apparently without 
a chance, is the future leader of the great people of this 
nation. And because we recognize this is a land of 
opportunity, and rejoice that once more there has been 
furnished such a splendid example of American oppor- 
tunity, we find impressed upon us with special force the 
lesson of Governor Johnson's Hfe. 

Everybody likes to see a poor boy attain success by 



288 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

industry and perseverance, but in Governor Johnson's 
life there was more than the deprivation of poverty, 
more than the mere lack of opportunities which many 
enjoy. It would seem that at the outset there was every- 
thing to discourage him, to depress him, to make him 
feel that he was without a chance. And so it is not 
simply that we admire his career. We think to-day of 
the inspiration that it gives. Every poor mother to-day 
is helped, as she seeks to care for her boy, in the thought 
of what Governor Johnson did. Every young man who 
thinks that the odds are somewhat against him is encour- 
aged when he thinks of what Governor Johnson became. 

Governor Johnson was a great pubhc man. He had 
the shrewdness to pierce sham and to detect reality, and 
his strength came not because he had come from obscurity 
by hard work alone, but because in the coming he had 
continued morally sound and democratically just and 
sympathetic, traits and ideals which many young men 
in a similar struggle lose sight of. 

And we rejoice that Governor Johnson won his way 
to the front with his sympathetic and his kindly disposi- 
tion, mthout losing the integrity of his character; which 
only shows the more, the greater the area of his influence 
and the higher the position that he attained. And there- 
fore it was that he was a pubHc man of strength. There- 
fore it was that he had such a strong hold upon the hearts 
of the people. They admired him for the labors he had 
gone through and the victories he had achieved in his 
own individual career. But he got their trust and con- 
fidence in Minnesota because in that voyage he had not 
jettisoned his self-respect or his personal honor; and they 
could trust him as a genuine leader of the people. 



CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 289 

He was a man who took a statesmanlike view of his 
duty. He was sympathetic with popular demands, but 
at the same time critical and cautious. People learned to 
trust him more the better they knew him. His repeated 
victories in a state the majority of whose voters were 
apparently of another poHtical faith showed what a 
strong hold he had, not simply upon the affectionate 
regard of the people, but upon the judgment of the people; 
for Governor Johnson could not have carried Minnesota 
merely out of sentiment. He carried Minnesota again 
and again because the sentiment was supplemented by 
sincere respect and by affection. 

It falls to my lot to come here to-day to say a word in 
tribute to his memory. You are thinking, and all the 
people are thinking, of what a loss has been sustained 
by this coimtry that we love in removing a man so well 
fitted for eminent service from the councils of the state 
and of the nation. That loss many may regard as irrep- 
arable, but let us not forget that the very fact of that 
appreciation of loss has emphasized the lessons of his 
career, and, taken away at the height of his power and 
in the very zenith of his strength, he will remain forever 
an inspiration to American youth, an aid to every honest 
pubHc officer, a security to American pubHc Hfe, a shining 
exemplar of a true man of the people, whose life was for 
the people. 



290 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

WILLIAM OF ORANGE-NASSAU: THE GREAT 
MODERATE MAN IN HISTORY 

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 
Author and Lecturer, of Ithaca, New York 

(Extract from a discourse before the European and American 
delegates at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, New York city, Sep- 
tember 21, 1909.) 

Behold him in history, this son of JuHana of Stolberg 
— WiUiam of Orange-Nassau, who in later tradition, 
but not by his contemporaries, is called Den Zwijger — 
WiUiam the Silent. Whatever else he be — stadholder 
of Imperial Majesty, signer of the proclamation of the 
Nobles' League, unsheather of the sword of revolt, head 
of the beggars who shout ^'Oranje Boven,^' leader of 
armies, rescuer of beleaguered Leyden, piercer of the 
dykes, diplomatist unmatched for skill and craft, the 
Father of the Fatherland, the idol of a grateful people, 
the penman of one of the grandest vindications of per- 
sonal character known either to Hterature or history, 
name him by any title that patriotism, gratitude, or admi- 
ration can summon forth from the vocabulary of earth's 
choicest tongues — we salute him, and we ask you to 
honor with us William, son of Juliana, the great mod- 
erate MAN OF HISTORY. He it was, the first pioneer in 
modern times of spiritual freedom, who beUeved that 
"where persecution begins, Christianity ends." Before 
Roger WilHams was bom, or Milton wrote, or WilKam 
Penn began his holy experiment, or American freedom 
of reHgion was fixed immutably both in our state consti- 



WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 291 

tution and in that matchless national instrument of 
1787 — which, under God, has dictated the reconstruc- 
tion of almost every constitutional government in the 
world, and which ushered in the era of the written consti- 
tutions of the world — he wrote in 1577 to the magistrates 
of Middelburg, thereby laying, in his own words hewn 
out of the Rock of Ages, the corner-stones first of the 
Dutch and then of the American republics: 

" We declare to you that you have no right to interfere 
with the conscience of anyone, so long as he has done 
nothing that works injury to another person or a public 
scandal." 

In other words, the grandest of all the gifts made by 
mighty WiUiam and sealed by his life's blood at Delft, 
when he forgave his fanatic murderer, was the spirit 
which he bequeathed to the Dutch repubhc. It was not 
the spirit of war, but of peace. His was not the animus of 
authority based on force, but the spirit of the religion of 
the Prince of Peace; and this spirit was quickly and richly 
manifested during that bloom of the republic, when the 
United Netherlands was at the van of the world's progress 
— so that we to-day, looking across the perspective of three 
centuries, behold the rock whence we were hewn, the hole 
of the pit whence our treasures were digged; for in that re- 
pubhc we see freedom of conscience and of the press, with 
liberty for all who would not abuse that Hberty. And these 
things we, who are of EngHsh blood and descent, see with 
true historical perspective, in The Netherlands; yes, even 
before Milton had lifted up his seraph voice for the freedom 
of printing, long before the free churches of England were 
able to come out of the catacombs into the glorious light of 
day, after the Revolution of 1688 of glorious memory. 



292 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Throughout the whole career of William the Silent we 

note the spirit of a man who felt, every moment of his 

life, his conscious dependence upon God: 

"Himself from God he could not free. 
He builded better than he knew." 

First, by birth and inheritance, a Roman Catholic; then, 
when still a youth, by decision of his parents and as one 
in the family, a Lutheran; and finally, by study, medi- 
tation, and profound personal conviction, a Calvinist, 
he was henceforth ever "tranquil amid the waves." 
Yet unlike many of his contemporaries, even not a few 
of saintly name, like Marnix St. Aldegonde, William 
believed that conscience should be free; and, in sym- 
pathy with and first of the large cities of the world to 
follow Wilham's glorious example and to build that prin- 
ciple as foundation and corner-stone of its history, was 
the city of the three silver crosses, the mother city of 
our Manhattan city — Amsterdam. 

There on the Amstel and the li was the municipality 
in which every man of good behavior who believed in 
the ten commandments and the everlasting and un- 
changeable principles of good neighborliness, of humanity 
and decency, in a word, of justice and mercy — whatever 
might be his way of "walking humbly with God" — found 
welcome and a home. What might be their inner way 
of conceiving truth or their outward way of expressing 
it in ritual was not inquired into. It was no part of 
national or municipal business in the Dutch republic 
to define dogmas or to settle the ultimate question as to 
the being and nature of God. Within and behind the 
walls of the synagogue, meeting-house, mosque, or church 
edifice, men might define their own doctrines and prac- 



SAMUEL PARKES CADMAJST ^93 

tise each his own ritual; but on the streets, in pubHc, 
only the Golden Rule was known and enforced. On the 
market, in trade, and wherever differing sorts of men 
met together, they lived in a peace that fulfilled again the 
picture of the lion and the lamb lying together and the 
weaned child playing on the cockatrice's den. Jew, Ana- 
baptist, Catholic, Protestant, Muscovite, Ottoman, the 
refugees from southern Europe or even those men escap- 
ing from the iron hand of the savage and cruel conformists 
of England were welcomed. Last and most wonderful 
to relate — even they, who, because they believed in 
applying democracy to religion, were considered as anar- 
chists and destroyers of peace and order, those Inde- 
pendents, now called Congregationalists, found a home 
in free Amsterdam. More eloquent, thrilling, inspiring 
than Rembrandt's miracles in art is the old bas-relief 
I saw on a Hebrew's house, which showed the hunted 
bird escaping the hawk; and the refuge was named 
"Amsterdam." 



ENGLAND'S "GRAND OLD MAN" 

SAMUEL PARKES CADMAN 
Pastor of the Central Congregational Church of Brooklyn 

(Extract from a pulpit discourse, February 6, 1910, on "Lessons 
from Gladstone's Life.") 

In Gladstone's library at Hawarden Castle stood four 
desks. On one would be found a copy and a translation 
from Homer. On another rested a budget, the effects 
of which shaped the financial policies of many nations. 



294 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

On the third was heaped a correspondence which con- 
nected him with all parts of the world. On the fourth 
one could discover his masters in theology and the latest 
volumes treating on the divine science. He moved from 
one desk to another, spending on an average two hours 
at each. Labor was rest, change made his recreation in 
the midst of toil. When his body demanded a course of 
training, he sallied out and felled a tree. In this wise 
combination he found his ability to go the second mile 
that always counts. He did not suffer from the delusion 
of the gifted that his grand abiHties excused him from 
appHcation. And when a difficult task confronted him, 
he bent his mighty strength to the business Uke Ulysses 
bending his bow. Economical of time, prodigal of effort, 
delivered from monotony, resurgent in vim, with reUgion 
as his chief concern, Gladstone made a brilHant and con- 
crete example of the hf e that we, as preachers, are always 
telling you young folks you ought to Uve. 

Criticise him as you please, in politics, but have no 
doubt about his majesty as a man. The sanction of 
his maker rested on his well-ordered pilgrimage. His 
quenchless zeal for the oppressed and the afflicted sprang 
out of this reUgion. 

"Thou gav'st to party strife the epic note, 
And to debate the thunder of the Lord; 
To meanest issues fire of the Most High. 
Hence, eyes that ne'er beheld thee now are dim, 
And aUen men on alien shores lament." 

And never was that eloquence used to better ends than 
when, in the autumn of 1895, he arose in his old age to 
make his last great appeal in behalf of the persecuted 
Armenians. Let me quote a description of the scene: 



SAMUEL PARKES CADMAN 295 

" See the old man with slow and dragging steps advan- 
cing from the door behind the platform to his seat before 
that sea of eager faces. The figure is shrunken. The 
eyelids droop. The cheeks are as parchment. Now that 
he sits, his hands lean heavily upon his staff. We think, 
*Ah! it is too late; the fire has flickered out; the speech 
will be but the dead echo of bygone glories.' But lo! 
he rises. The color mantles to his face. He stands erect, 
alert. The great eyes open full upon his countrymen. 
Yes, the first notes are somewhat feeble, somewhat 
painful; but a few minutes pass, and the noble voice 
falls as the solemn music of an organ on the throng. The 
eloquent arms seem to weave a mystic garment for his 
oratory. The involved sentences unfold themselves with 
a perfect lucidity. The whole man dilates. The soul 
breaks out through the marvelous lips. Age? Not so! 
This is eternal youth. He is pleading for mercy to an 
outraged people, for fidelity to a national obligation, for 
courage and for conscience in a tremendous crisis. And 
the words from the revised version of the Psalm seem 
to print themselves on the listener's heart: 'Thou hast 
made him but Httle lower than God, and crownest him 
with glory and honor.'" 

This was perhaps the last grand outburst of one who 
offered his daily prayers to God, who insisted upon 
attendance at church as the duty of every good citizen, 
who never missed a season of holy communion, who 
read the Scriptures, not only privately, but in the public 
worship of his village church, and whose eyes closed in 
death while nations waited for the last message from the 
chamber whence he entered into rest. ''You have so 
lived," said one who wrote him after he was laid aside 



296 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

by mortal sickness, "that you have kept the soul of 
England alive." 

Young men, this story is England's imperishable heri- 
tage to be added to her enrichment of us all by reason 
of such children as Alfred the Great, John Milton, John 
Hampden, WilHam Pitt, and Alfred Tennyson. But it 
also belongs to you and to every man and woman who 
seeks in any calling to hve a pure and noble life. His 
gifts were his own. Our problems are not his. New 
occasions teach new duties, but so long as our race can 
produce so Godlike a man as Gladstone is its candlestick 
in the divine presence and its light shining clear on the 
path that Hes before us. 



SHAKESPEARE THE UNAPPROACHABLE 

EDWARD H. RANDOLPH 
0/ the Shreveport, Louisiana, Bar 

(Condensed from the concluding part of an address delivered 
before the Shakespeare Society of New York city, December 22, 
1905-) 

We know something of the influences operating upon 
Shakespeare, but for the rest we must consult his immortal 
creations, endless in their variety: for w^hat phase of Hfe 
has he not touched, what passions has he not explored, 
and are not his characters more real than Uving beings 
themselves? What temple of fame holds so noble a 
collection as the endless gallery of his portraits ? What 
is there in the domain of morals, of manners, of economy, 
of philosophy, of reHgion, of taste, of the conduct of life, 



EDWARD H. RANDOLPH 297 

that he has not taught us? What chords has he not 
touched from the deepest tragic to the Hghtest lyric: he 
has equality of power in tragedy, farce, narrative, and 
love songs, and this power of transmitting the inmost 
truth of things into music and verse is what makes him 
not only the greatest poet, but it makes him the 
representative poet. This is his supreme di£ference 
from other poets: no idiosyncrasy, no mannerisms, no 
egotisms creep into his poetry. There is no exaggeration, 
no self-assertion, no false relations, nothing forced, all 
as easy and natural as the mountains slope up from the 
plains, as the rose unfolds from the bud, as the setting 
sun sinks into the sea. His supreme greatness is simply 
in transferring the inmost truth of things into music 
and verse. We feel it in his lines: 

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing ^dth golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

We feel the association of truth and music when he 
speaks of the sea as 

"The murmuring surge 
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes." 

So we come to the supreme reason why we should 
study and explore all the workings of this master mind. 
First, because in it is found the largest and richest expres- 
sion of poetic thought; and more and more mankind will 
discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life 
for us, to console us, to sustain us. Second, because 
Shakespeare is "the king of poetic strength and style 
as well as the king of the realm of thought, and has 
given us the most varied, the most harmonious verse 



298 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

that has ever sounded upon the human ear since the 
verse of the Greeks." Not only has he shaped and 
colored the Anglo-Saxon thought, but he has taken pos- 
session of the English language, as Wordsworth in one 
of his sonnets sings: 

"In our halls is hung 
Armory of the invincible knights of old: 
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spoke." 

Beyond this he is not only the great Anglo-Saxon poet, 
but in his favor has gone the definitive judgment of the 
international amphictyonic court of final appeal. 

Among his contemporaries, his greatness hardly guessed 
at: with the march of ages his grandeur reveals itself more 
and more; but what moved within the great brain and the 
great heart of Shakespeare, more wise and deep, perhaps, 
than all his tragedies and comedies, we shall never know; 
it was a matter for himself, and he kept his secret with 
the taciturnity of nature: 

"Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
We ask and ask — thou smileth and art still, 
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill 
Who to the stars imcrowns his majesty. 
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, 
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling place, 
Spares but the cloudy borders of his base 
To the foil'd searching of mortality: 
And thou who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honored, self-secure, 
Didst tread on earth imguessed at — better so! 
All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow 
Find their sole speech in thy victorious brow." 



THOMAS BURKE 299 

TRIBUTE TO JOHN B. ALLEN 

THOMAS BURKE 

Of the Seattle, Washington, Bar; formerly Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of Washington Territory 

(An excerpt from an address on the "Life and Character of John 
B. Allen," dehvered before the State Bar Association of the State 
of Washington, 1903.) 

I AM called upon to-day to perform a duty of mingled 
sadness and pleasure: of sadness when I recall that the 
one who is at this moment in all our thoughts was but 
yesterday, as it were, in the full flush of manhood, in 
the full maturity of all his powers, and that to-day he 
has disappeared from our view forever; of pleasure when 
I consider the clear and honorable record, both in private 
and pubHc Hfe, which he has left behind him as an imper- 
ishable heritage to his family and to the state — for such 
a record is that of John B. Allen, late United States 
Senator from the State of Washington. 

In order to attain distinction in life two things must 
conspire. First, there must be the opportunity, and 
next, there must be the abiHty to perceive and improve 
it. A man, for example, might have unsurpassed talent 
for the law, and yet if he dwelt in a country like that 
ruled by Peter the Great, where the only law was the 
ruler's will, his talent would perish with him unknown. 
A man might have a genius for war equal to that of 
Caesar or Napoleon, yet if his lot were cast in a peaceful 
age and in a small, unwarlike country, he might never 
be heard of as a warrior. If the great War of the Rebellion 
had been delayed twenty-five years. Grant, or Sherman, 
or Sheridan might never have been known as soldiers 



300 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

outside of the army register. And I am of the opinion 
that if it had been Allen's fortune to have lived his pro- 
fessional life in New York city rather than in Olympia, 
Walla Walla, or Seattle, he would have risen to a place 
in the front rank of the ablest lawyers in the country. 
He had the abiHty, and only wanted the opportunity 
which the larger field in the East would have afforded him. 
Mr. Allen had a kind and sympathetic nature. He had 
both wit and humor, which he used with telhng effect 
at the bar and in his poHtical contests. But he never 
used either to inflict a wound even on his bitterest adver- 
sary. He was indeed one 

"Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, 
Ne'er carried a heart stain away on its blade." 

He was especially kind and considerate to young men, 
as scores throughout the state to-day will testify. 

His private Hfe was a worthy background to his pro- 
fessional and public career. I knew him intimately for 
more than a quarter of a century, and my acquaintance 
with him is one of the purest and most elevating treasures 
in my memory of the past. A more wholesome moral 
nature I never knew. His mind had the purity of that 
of a good woman. Yet he was no weakhng. He did 
not belong to the insipidly moral class. He was in 
every sense a manly man. It is one of the misfortunes 
of humankind that we never value such men at their 
true worth until we have lost them forever. 

"For it so falls out 
That what we have we prize not to the worth 
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, 
Why, then we reck the value; then we find 
The virtue that possession would not show us 
Whiles it was ours." 



WHITELAW REID 301 

Now that he is gone, we begin to realize our loss; and 
to the state he served so well by precept, by patriotic 
work, and by example, to the bar of the state whose 
history he has enriched by a professional career so full 
of honor and distinction, to his family to whom he has 
left the most precious of all inheritances, the memory 
of a good man's Hfe — his loss is indeed irreparable. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

WHITELAW REID 
American Ambassador to England 

(Condensed from an address before the Authors' Club, upon the 
occasion of the celebration of the Poe Centenary, at London, Eng- 
land, March i, 1909.) 

A HUNDRED years ago Edgar Allan Poe entered upon 
his troubled life. Now, long after his unhappy death, 
and long after Enghsh and French hterary tribunals have 
accepted him as one of the immortals, his countrymen 
yet wait, even beyond the century, still hesitating to 
place him with their other Hterary figures, some surely far 
smaller, in their Hall of Fame. His genius, so promptly 
and generously recognized abroad, is of course no longer 
questioned. But we take pains to remember that it ran 
within certain narrow and sharply defined channels; that it 
frequently failed to reach the highest and best human emo- 
tions; that it was often morbid and sometimes repulsive. 

Yet, with all abatements, Poe's place was surely in 
the front rank, if not at the very head, among the world's 



302 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

tellers of short stories. Who has since given us, in such 
perfect English, the indefinable mystery and the shud- 
dering sense of implacable fate, pervading air, earth and 
sky, lake and forest, house and people, which we all 
recall whenever we think of "The Fall of the House of 
Usher"? Where has the fiendish perfection of revenge 
been presented more powerfully, or more briefly, or with 
more artistic reserve than in "The Cask of Amontillado"? 
Who was the legitimate and inspired forerunner of the 
immortal Sherlock Holmes himself, if not the author of 
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"? And who pointed 
the way to "Treasure Island," if not the author of "The 
Gold-Bug"? Where, indeed, are the "Tales of the Ara- 
besque and the Grotesque" to be surpassed in their own 
field in the Hterature of America, or of England, or of 
France, or of the world? 

But I am not able to think Poe's place in poetry so 
high or so secure as his place in the telUng of short stories. 
I admit, at once, the incomparable rhythm, the mastery 
of the wonderful music that may be married to Enghsh 
verse, the sad, haunting tenderness, melody, and mys- 
tery. The technique of Poe's poetry is perfection. Yet, 
perfect as his poems are of their kind, they still seem to 
me to lack the highest poetic merit — the soul is not in 
them. How could it be ? Here is a man of rare genius 
who enters the poetical field with the avowed and serious 
belief that a long poem cannot exist; that the epic is a 
mania, and the didactic a heresy; that the truth has no 
sympathy with the myrtles; that, in fact, poetry must 
be solely and exclusively the rhythmical creation of 
beauty: that with the intellect or conscience it has only 
collateral relations, and no concern whatever either with 



HENRY M. MacCRACKEN 303 

duty or with truth. Do not think I am misrepresenting 
him. These are his own expressions, not from some 
mad extravaganza of his unhappier hours, but from his 
soberest and most dehberate effort to define the nature 
of the poetic art. On such a conception how could the 
uttermost heights be attained ? 

Finally, let us never forget Poe's hard fate in his own 
choice of a Hterary executor and biographer. Not till 
this generation did he get bare justice at home — and 
then best, perhaps, in the definitive edition of his works 
and biography issued a few years ago by two associates. 
Professor Woodberry of Columbia and the prominent 
and lately mourned man of letters whom New Yorkers 
loved to call their banker-poet. It was a pathetic story 
which these editors had to deal with and we have to 
remember to-night. I am not going to dwell on it; I 
am only going to protest against Griswold's version of 
it. Poe was not a bad man; in many ways he was tender 
and lovable and loyal. Certainly he was not wicked as 
he was painted; only pitifully weak. Let those who are 
perfect cast stones. 



JULIUS CESAR AND JOHN CALVIN 

HENRY M. MacCRACKEN 
Chancellor of the University of the City of New York 

(Extract from a lecture on "John Calvin," delivered before the 
Tappan Hall Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 25, 1888.) 

Even as the lofty Alps rise above all other European 
moimtains, so in history the race of the Latins rises 



304 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

above its sister races. And, as among the Alps there 
are two peaks, and two only, that transcend by thou- 
sands of feet their fellows: the one looking to the south, 
over sunny Italy; the other looking toward the north, 
over fair France — the so-called Rose Mountain and the 
White Mountain; so from the whole multitude of the 
race of the Latins there rise just two men, far transcending 
all other Latins; one looking toward the south, the other 
looking toward the north; one belonging to ancient days, 
the other to modern: JuHus Caesar and John Calvin. 

Come with me to look upon the two as they enter each 
his final field of effort, at the youthful age of twenty- 
seven. 

Yonder, JuHus Caesar, thin, tall, sallow, and not a 
very well-to-do young lawyer, is entering, after long 
absence, the city of Rome. Here, John Calvin, thin, tall, 
sallow, and a not very well-to-do yoimg lawyer, preacher 
also, and author, is entering a hotel in Geneva. 

Yon Caesar, when a wanderer, had it said of him by 
Sulla, the chief of the Roman ohgarchy: ''This youth 
will one day overthrow our aristocracy. In this young 
Caesar there is many a Marius." This Calvin, when a 
wanderer, had it said of him by Erasmus, the chief scholar 
in the pay of the Roman hierarchy: "I see there [in 
CaKdn] a great plague in the Church, ready to break out 
against the Church." 

Yon Caesar, entering Rome at twenty-seven years of 
age, has not been an idler during his seven years of travel, 
but has studied well — studied books in Greece and mili- 
tary arts in Asia — and has done some battHng already 
at his own vocation, with pirates and Parthians, his 
favorite motto being, ''There is nothing that can stand 



HENRY M. MacCRACKEN ' 305 

against Caesar!" This Calvin, entering Geneva at 
twenty-seven years of age, has not been an idler during 
his five years of travel, but has studied well — studied 
books in south France, on the Rhine, and in Italy, and 
has done some warring already, at his own vocation, 
with papists and pagans, his frequent text, used over 
and over, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" 

At fifty-five years died the great Latin of ancient days, 
stricken by the hands of men, such as Brutus, whom he 
had cherished! Caesar died thus because he had lived 
upon so low a level of regard for his fellowmen. And 
when Caesar was dead, his shrewd adherent, Antony, by 
artful appeals, stirred the populace to mourn his dying, 
and, in their fury, to even devote the forum and its 
furniture to a funeral pile, on which was burned all that 
was left of Caesar! So Caesar went down, Uke the sun 
on the sand of the Sahara, scorching and blackening. 

How different Calvin, who also died at fifty-five! 
Finishing his work in the same number of years as Caesar, 
Calvin lay upon his couch, and the rulers of the republic 
came and asked his last coimsels, and Hstened rever- 
ently to his last testimony, and took leave with clasped 
hands, tears streaming down their cheeks, as like chil- 
dren these grave magistrates parted from Calvin as their 
father! So, also, his fellow pastors took their leave. 
And then, as the deep anguish quenched his life, the 
whole republic — rulers and clergy, university and 
people — bore him to the cemetery, and laid him, as 
he had requested, under the level sod, not to be vexed 
with stone or other monument. There, as of Moses' 
sepulcher, no man knoweth of Calvin's sepulcher until 
this day. 



3o6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

So John Calvin's sun set on this world as the sun goes 
down on the verdure of Switzerland's meadows, warming 
and cheering, to rise again on each new to-morrow, 
cheering and warming the earth still, and as long as sun 
and moon shall endure, throughout all generations. 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN MARSHALL 

RICHAIO) OLNEY 

Secretary of State during Cleveland's second administration 

(Extract from an oration delivered in Boston, 1901, the occasion 
being the centenary celebration of the installation of Marshall as 
first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.) 

It is not obvious what most of us are bom for, nor 
why almost anyone might as well not have been born 
at all. Occasionally, however, it is plain that a man 
is sent into the world with a particular work to perform. 
If the man is commonly, though not always, unconscious 
of this mission, his contemporaries are as a rule equally 
bHnd, and it remains for after generations to discover 
that a man has lived and died for whom was set an 
appointed task, who has attempted and achieved it, and 
who has made the whole course of history different from 
what it would have been without him. 

John Marshall had a mission of that sort to whose 
success intellect and learning of the highest order, as 
well as special legal abiHty and training, might well 
have proved inadequate. The work Marshall was des- 
tined to undertake can be estimated only by considering 



RICHARD OLNEY 307 

its inherent character. All minor features being disre- 
garded, there are two of capital importance. In the 
first place, here was a ship of state just launched which 
was to be run rigidly by chart — by saiHng directions 
laid down in advance and not to be departed from, what- 
ever the winds or the waves or the surprises or perils 
of the voyage — in accordance with grants and limita- 
tions of power set forth in writing and not to be violated 
or ignored except at the risk and cost of revolution and 
civil war. The experiment thus inaugurated was unique 
in the history of civilized peoples and believed to be of 
immense consequence both to the American people and 
to the himian race. But there were also wheels within 
wheels, and the experiment of government according to 
a written text entailed yet another; namely, that of a 
judicial branch designed to keep all other branches 
within their prescribed spheres. To that end it was not 
enough to make the judicial branch independent of the 
legislative and executive branches. It was necessary to 
make it the final judge not only of the powers of those 
other departments, but of its own powers as well. 

It was a national judiciary of this sort of which John 
Marshall became the head one hundred years ago. That 
he dominated his court on all constitutional questions is 
indubitable. That he exercised his mastery with marvelous 
sagacity and tact, that he manifested a profound compre- 
hension of the principles of our constitutional government 
and declared them in terms unrivaled for their combina- 
tion of simpHcity and exactness, that he justified his 
judgments by reasoning impregnable in point of logic 
and irresistible in point of persuasiveness — has not all 
this been universally conceded for the two generations 



3o8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

since his death and will it not be found to have been 
universally voiced to-day wherever throughout the land 
this centenary has been observed? "All wrong," said 
John Randolph of one of Marshall's opinions, "all 
wrong — but no man in the United States can tell why 
or wherein he is wrong." 



EULOGY OF WILLIAM B. ALLISON 

JOHN W. DANIEL 
Late United States Senator from Virginia 

(Extract from a memorial address on William B. Allison, late 
United States Senator from Iowa, delivered in the Senate of the 
United States February 21, 1909.) 

A GUIDE, a counselor, and a leader — so to speak, a 
father in Israel — has left us in the vanished form of 
WiUiam B. Allison, to whom we had become so accustomed 
that his presence seems to abide. He was a great senator, 
even as he was a good citizen and a noble American. He 
gave his first fruits and the best fruits of his life to his 
people and his country. He left no enemies here. We 
looked upon him with friendship, and everyone found in 
him a friend. He was born at Perry, Ohio, March 2, 
1829. He died at his home in Dubuque, Iowa, on the 
fourth day of August, 1908, in the eightieth year of his 
age. 

Senator Allison was a man of peace and a great peace- 
maker. He instinctively observed the wise admonition 
of Allen G. Thurman to "keep a civil tongue in his mouth." 



JOHN W. DANIEL 309 

He avoided the sharp and bitter angles of speech as well 
as of practical affairs in Hfe. It was axiomatic with the 
ancients that the middle way is the safe way. It is the 
wise way, the way that least tires the traveler, and 
the way that least breaks axles and harness and wheels. 
The most experienced and best lawyers have always 
settled their cases, when they could, out of court, not 
in it. It was laughingly said of a certain statesman that 
he was so prone to compromise that if a claimant de- 
manded both the Capitol and Library, he would com- 
pound by saying, "Well, take thfe Library and leave us 
the Capitol." AlHson was not that kind or any other 
kind of a weakHng. When he stood for a principle to 
which he was devoted, he was as firm as a rock and 
beHeved that God Almighty hates a quitter. 

Moderation and patience were his masterful virtues. 
They are not the swiftest coursers in the chariot-race, 
but they are the surest footed, the strongest, and the 
most dependable in the vast majority of the affairs of 
nations and of men. Neither the individual nor the 
social body can find verifiable progress without them. 
They wreck no trains; they cut down no trees to get at 
the fruit. They do not break banks nor burn candles at 
both ends; they join no "get-rich-quick" societies. They 
bury no armies in Russian snows, they bring on no revo- 
lutions, and they stir no schisms. They excite no hatred, 
but always allay it. They may not shine in the meteoric 
splendor that departs as it illumines, but they do the 
great and wholesome business of man's existence. They 
spread the ample board; they provide food and raiment; 
they store the fuel that makes summer by the hearth- 
stone of the winter time. Like the sun, again, you may 



310 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

not see it move, but it is moving all the same, and when 
the day is done it has done its work of vitality and cheer 
over the wide landscape. 

These be virtues, the signal virtues, moderation and 
patience, which are most of all things to be commended 
and cultivated in a great repubhc, for the repubHc, of 
all forms of government, is the most quickly affected 
by the transient gusts of pubHc opinion. In such wise, 
and in such wise alone, can we best serve America that 
her fair form 

" Shall rise and shine, 

Make bright our days and Hght our dreams, 

Putting to shame with lips divine 

The falsehood of extremes." 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

JOSEPH H. CHOATE 
Former United States Ambassador to Great Britain 

(Extract from his inaugural address as President of the Asso- 
ciated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, March 19, 1904.) 

Revolutionary periods produce, if they do not create, 
men of genius whom the exigencies of the times demand. 
Whether they are bred out of the conditions which 
create the revolution, or always exist in every community, 
waiting for the supreme summons to call them forth, 
seems httle to the purpose to inquire. The appointed 
hour strikes and the man appears. 

Napoleon, the most consummate individual force in 
modern history, evolved out of years of terror and anarchy 



JOSEPH H. CHOATE 311 

to rescue a great nation from chaos, will occur to every- 
one as the most striking example. Lincoln, of happier 
destiny, rising above the bloody carnage of civil war to 
save his divided country, by striking the shackles from 
four millions of slaves, and so converting the doubtful 
war for empire into a sublime and triumphant contest 
for freedom, seems to have been providentially created 
for that awful crisis. Going back to the very beginning 
of our young repubHc, when, after all hope of conciliation 
with the mother country was abandoned, the Continental 
Congress appointed Washington as the commander-in- 
chief of the American army, to withstand the overwhelming 
power of the mightiest of nations, and, by his match- 
less patience, skill, and valor, to achieve the independence 
of the colonies, they appear to have found and selected 
the one man in all history best qualified for that most 
critical task. 

In the subsequent making of the new nation, which 
the success of Washington and his companions-in-arms 
at last rendered possible, there appeared a considerable 
body of statesmen, trained in poHtical discussion, tried 
by seven years of war, aroused by the four years of 
anarchy that succeeded, whose combined wisdom and 
foresight framed the Constitution of the United States, 
and set in motion the government which it called into 
being, in a way that to-day challenges the admiration 
and approval of all thinking men. Foremost among 
these in intellectual brilliancy, individual force, con- 
structive capacity, and personal influence was Alexander 
Hamilton. 

Not that Hamilton was a man without spot or blemish. 
He had many glaring faults, but they were mostly the 



312 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

T 

result of that passionate and impetuous nature which 
was a striking feature of his personahty. This involved 
him in personal quarrels which sadly interfered with 
the plans and the policy of the Federalists, and one of 
which directly led to their overthrow. But his com- 
manding talents and weight of character were so tran- 
scendent, his genius for pubhc service so unfailing, his 
poHtical vision so clear, and his devotion to public duty 
so constant, that even these great faults have hardly 
diminished the luster of his fame, or the gratitude of 
his countrymen for his matchless services in laying the 
foundations of the republic. He scorned all mercenary 
ideas and motives, all low ambitions, and his integrity 
was so absolute, and his patriotism so unselfish and 
exalted, that his name and career are a cherished national 
treasure. 

The tragical death of Hamilton has done much to 
embalm his name in the memory of his countrymen. 
Great as he was, he was not great enough to rise above 
the barbarous and brutal theory and practise of that 
age, which sanctioned and compelled a resort to the 
duel as the honorable mode of settling personal disputes, 
but to which the cruel sacrifice of his precious Hfe put 
an end, at least in the northern states. Two years 
before, he had followed to the grave his eldest son, a 
victim to the same senseless code of honor, and now, 
still in the very prime of his own Hfe, at the age of forty- 
seven, in the midst of a great career of usefulness, crowned 
with all the laurels which his grateful country could 
bestow, he was called to meet his own untimely fate. 
He accepted the challenge, forced upon him by his most 
dangerous and unscrupulous political adversary, with 



LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT 313 

whom he had had many bitter contests, and who was 
at last determined to be rid of him. One glorious July 
morning, on the heights of Weehawken, overlooking the 
Hudson and in sight of his own happy home in New 
York — whose idol he had been — they met for the last 
and mortal combat. Hamilton fell fatally wounded at 
the first shot of his adversary, having fired his own pistol 
in the air, and so unhappily and unworthily ended the 
life of one of the noblest, manhest, and most useful men 
of whom we have any record — the trusted friend and 
companion of Washington — and one of the best gifts 
of God to the nation which they labored together to 
found. 



"LEE'S OLD WAR HORSE": LIEUTENANT- 
GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET 

LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT 

Editor of ^^The Georgian'* 

(Extract from an address delivered before the Alumni Society 
of the University of Georgia, June 16, 1908.) 

Before the bar of public opinion I am here to-day to 
plead the cause of an old soldier who sleeps mantled in 
the Confederate gray; who, with honest convictions, took 
an unpopular course during the days of Reconstruction; 
who, refusing to recant, died unwept and unforgiven; 
but who, in the long reach of the reconciling years, will 
yet find, I am sure, the reversal of judgment which will 
convert obloquy into honor. 



314 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

No better soldier was there in Lee's army than this 
grim warrior from Georgia, and well did he merit the 
title of "Lee's Old War Horse." Following the war he 
engaged in the cotton brokerage business in New Orleans, 
and just at that time he was asked to give his opinion 
of the political crisis. In view of the utter helplessness 
of the South he felt that the best way to accomplish the 
removal of the incubus of Reconstruction lay in the patient 
acceptance of the situation. Consequently he advised 
the South to submit. He lined himself squarely with 
the Reconstructionists; and facing the hostile elements, 
he seemed to say in the words of Seneca's pilot, "O 
Neptune, you can sink me or you can save me, but 
whatever may be my fate, I shall hold the rudder true." 

It was an unpopular course which was taken by Lee's 
Old War Horse. I know where I would have stood and 
what I would have done, for my sympathies have ever 
been with those who hurled the indignant protest of the 
Anglo-Saxon. But the course was one which honest 
convictions compelled him to take; one which subse- 
quent developments in large measure served to justify; 
one which Governor Brown took with like results; one 
which Mr. Stephens advocated without leaving the Demo- 
cratic party; and one which General Lee himself is said 
to have coxmseled and approved. Never can I forget the 
speech of vindication which Governor Brown delivered 
in Atlanta on the event of his election to the United 
States Senate. I was only a lad, and Governor Brown 
was not an orator to stir the youthful imagination. 
But the echoes of the old governor's speech could not 
have been more lingering if they had come from the 
bugle horns of Elfland. He argued that the logic of 



LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT 315 

events had established the wisdom of his course during 
the days of Reconstruction; and then, to cap the climax, 
he drew from his pocket an old letter to show what another 
Confederate soldier thought of his Appomattox parole. 
It was written from Lexington, Virginia. In no uncer- 
tain words it commended the policy of acquiescence as the 
one which was best in keeping with the terms of sur- 
render and the one which was most likely to mitigate 
the evils of Reconstruction. "That letter," said the old 
governor, as he held it up before the breathless audience, 
"was penned by the hand and dictated by the heart of 
that immortal hero, Robert E. Lee." 

Georgia's war governor was sent to the United States 
Senate, but there was no melting of the ice for Longstreet. 

Georgia has now recalled her Brown to sit side by side 
with her Hill in the American Senate; but not yet has 
she recalled her Longstreet to ride side by side with 
her Gordon upon the pavements of her capitol. In one 
sense it is too late to undo the past, for it Hes not in the 
voice of her honor to provoke the silent dust nor in the 
tongue of flattery to soothe the dull, cold ear of death; 
but ere many suns have risen and set upon Georgia 
another silent figure on horseback will be foimd guarding 
the portals of her Capitol. Gordon's statue faces the 
north, and it tells how Gordon faced the north whether 
in wrestling for victory or in pleading for peace. Long- 
street's statue must face the south, not only in confident 
appeal, but with expectant look for the vindication which 
is sure to come at last. Until it comes the tattered old 
flag mil droop for shame from her memorial arches. 
Until it comes the legend upon her coat of arms mil 
be meaningless mockery. Until it comes the scales of 



3i6 MIERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

Justice which hang in her supreme court-room will flash 
into her face the mystic symbols upon the walls of Baby- 
lon; and, though prosperity may belt her hke the bands 
of Saturn, it will only wrap her in the guilty splendors 
of Belshazzar's feast. But come it will. So start the 
procession to the quarry; bring forth the granite; sum- 
mon the sculptor; and prepare the chisel; for the old 
commonwealth at last, from Chickamauga's dust to 
Tybee's hght, is waking from her sleep. She intends to 
revoke the unjust sentence which has rested all too long 
upon the old knight whom Lee loved; and in the zeal of 
her anxiety to render due homage to the name of Long- 
street she will want to proclaim the amended verdict in 
colors so bright and in letters so large that, standing 
upon the battlements of Yonah Mountain, she will have 
to snatch the pencil of the dawn and write it on the 
bosom of the stars. 



EULOGY OF DAVID A. DeARMOND 

WILLIAM P. BORLAND 

Congressman from Missouri 

(Extract from an address delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives April 9, 1910, in commemoration of the life and services of 
David A. DeArmond, late a congressman from Missouri. Mr. 
DeArmond was burned to death at his home in Missouri while 
attempting to rescue his grandchild from the flames.) 

The tragic death of David DeArmond removed sud- 
denly from the national stage one of the strong leaders 
of his party and one upon whom the most weighty responsi- 



WILLIAM P. BORLAND 317 

biKties rested. No man could have foreseen the inscrut- 
able providence by which such a briUiant career, so well 
rounded, so tempered by the ripeness of experience, so 
firmly founded upon the enduring respect and esteem of 
a great constituency, so full of promise of immediate 
and continual usefulness, should be brought to such an 
untimely end. 

The American Congress is full of strong men, men who 
by their personahty, native abiUty, and force of character 
have made themselves conspicuous among the thousands 
of their fellow citizens who constitute a great congres- 
sional district. Among such strong men of strong per- 
sonahties this Httle giant of the sixth Missouri district 
towered to a conspicuous place. It was the force of 
his intellect? Yes, to a certain extent. It was the 
force of his industry and conscientious devotion to duty ? 
That also is true, but was no less true of many other 
men. The thing which made DeArmond great was his 
greatness of soul, which made his associates reaHze his 
inflexible fideHty to the American principle of equal 
rights. To him equal rights meant no less the vigorous 
assertion of his own proper claims and those of the people 
of his district than a just and kindly consideration of 
the rights of all people and all districts. He would no 
more encroach upon the rights of others than he would 
permit the invasion of his own. He was scrupulously 
exact in refusing any especial advantage to himself. 
He would not stultify himself by seeking undue advan- 
tages or accepting undue favors, which he knew were 
not consistent with the justice which he owed to others. 
This trait of his character was famiUar to his associates 
and shines like a brilhant fixed star, in what is sometimes 



3i8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

regarded by the pessimistic as a black midnight of political 
corruption, special privilege, and graft. If more public 
servants had the high courage of their convictions to 
refuse unearned favors and special privileges to them- 
selves, there would be no note of pessimism in American 
politics. It is the acceptance of favors not deserved and 
of special privileges without adequate public compensa- 
tion that constitutes the first step out of the straight and 
narrow path of honest seK-government toward the 
bottomless pit of corruption and graft. No man saw 
this more clearly or Hved it more truly than David A. 
DeArmond. His life is a lesson to all young legislators 
and his example should be heralded to the world as proof 
of the eternal vitality of the principles of self-government. 
And now he is gone, leaving the indelible impress of 
his example upon our national poHtical Hfe, and having 
written another brilUant page in the rich and varied 
history of the great commonwealth of Missouri. We 
cherish his memory and add it to our common heritage 
of great traditions, which underHe Hke a broad foimda- 
tion the splendid edifice of the perpetuity of our repubhc. 

"The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The captains and the kings depart, 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, 
A humble and a contrite heart; 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget! Lest we forget!" 



WILLIAM A. DICKSON 319 



EULOGY OF ANSELM J. McLAURIN 

WILLIAM A. DICKSON 
Congressman from Mississippi 

(Extract from an address delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives April 10, 1910, in commemoration of the life and services of 
Anselm J. McLamrin, late United States Senator from Mississippi.) 

Somewhere I have read that in the beginning the 
Great Designer, conceiving the making of man, called 
into coimcil those attendant ministers about the throne 
of Omnipotence — Justice, Truth, and Mercy — and, 
laying bare to them the designs of Deity, he asked counsel. 
In answer. Justice first replied, *'0 God of Justice, make 
not man, for he wiU trample Thy law beneath his feet 
and make of Justice a mockery on earth." Truth, next 
simamoned, said, "Make not man, O God of Truth, for 
he will pervert Thine own word. Thou God of Truth, 
and make of verity a mockery in the land." But Mercy, 
next in turn summoned, meekly came and said, "Make 
him, O Thou God of Mercy, and give him into my keep- 
ing, and I will guide his footsteps and guard his walk on 
earth." And He made him and said, "Go, thou child 
of Mercy, and minister to thy fellows." Obedient to that 
inspiration, God-given and God-felt, Anselm McLaurin 
lived, acted, and died. By the God of truth, in the Hght 
of justice, and by the measure of mercy, is he rewarded. 

Senator McLaurin occupied almost all stations official 
in the catalogue of the public service of Mississippi. 
Loyalty characterized the attachment of those who 
followed his personal and poHtical fortunes. Friendship 



320 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

was his talisman and the unvarying majority attending 
his every poHtical contest serves as an eloquent eulogium 
of his hold upon the hearts of his people. He was a 
warrior without defeat, a victor without disdain. No 
sun ever set upon that field of strife, whereon he was a 
contestant, that marked the trailing of his banner in 
the wake of the conquered. 

His last years were his most illustrious, in that he lived 
a life that was a lesson, luminous and illustrative of the 
best. The majestic Christian walked hand in hand with 
the accompUshed statesman. 

To him who speaks it was permitted to see him last 
of all who here with him served. Two days after the 
Thanksgiving of the nation I met him. It was after 
something of a taxing journey. The salutations passed, 
he said, "Will, I am tired. The doctor says the valve 
of my heart is leaking." It was too true. Through that 
greatest of his parts, his splendid soul was finding an 
ebbing place. As came the Christmas tide, the recur- 
ring season, remindful of the Master's birth, in the heart 
of his family, saying, ''I feel better to-day," after a 
season of depression, his majestic soul took its flight, 
without further warning. 

Just a day after, in the little city of Brandon, off to 
one side in God's chosen acre, where "the rude fore- 
fathers of the hamlet sleep," they laid him in the gentle 
bosom of his mother. There at last in his windowless 
tenement he rests. The "dead Douglas" has won the 
field; and in this his last triumph we see his greatest 
victory. He conquered self, but bent to none but 
God, and Hved as one who might say of the irrevocable 
past: 



CHARLES F. AKED 321 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods there be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

" It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishment the goal, 
I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul." 



THE PILGRIM FAITH 

CHARLES F. AKED 
Pastor of the First Avenue Baptist Church of New York City 

(Extract from a sermon preached on Forefathers' Sunday, Decem- 
ber 20, 1908.) 

It was in the university city of Leyden, in Holland, 
nearly three hundred years ago. The congregation was 
EngHsh. The preacher was a man of fine presence, rare 
intellectual and spiritual culture, and moving eloquence. 
One who knew him in his EngHsh home spoke of him as 
"a man utterly reverenced in all the city for the grace 
of God in him." Strong men were shaken by their 
emotions as by a tempest. Tears flowed down the 
cheeks of women. It was a strange and wonderful 
service, as the preacher spoke from this strange text: 
"Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, 
that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek 
of Him a straight way, for us, and for our Httle ones, 
and for all our substance." The remainder of that day 
was spent "in pouring out prayers to the Lord with 



322 AIvlERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

great fervency, mixed with abundance of tears," and the 
next in the sadness of farewells. On the following day, 
some on foot, some in wagons, more by canal-boat, the 
people made their way to D elf shaven, where the Speed- 
well swning at her anchor, and there embarked for an 
EngHsh port, only to trust themselves again to the western 
billows, in search of a new and nobler England over seas. 
The men of the seventeenth century and all the number- 
less imknown heroes who shared their sacrifice and toil 
fought for Hberty that they might safeguard and spread 
spirituahty upon the earth. In a single phrase, that is 
the entire story of their struggle against bigot, priest, 
and king. They were very sure that spirituahty could 
not walk in fetters, and they sought a free state in order 
that they might build a free church. Your fathers 
settled that question for you and settled it right, and 
under the Constitution it is settled forever. Ours, 
therefore, is a different task. We have to serve and 
save the spirituahty of the nation lest the Hberties of the 
land decay. For the forms of democracy are precisely 
those through which corruption most readily works if 
the spirit of democracy be dead. ** Where there is no 
vision the people perish." And this country without 
ideals, without spiritual vision, without a Hving faith, 
without God, were lost indeed. So that the question 
which I address to you: Do you still beheve in the God 
of your fathers? Is their faith yours? means, in its last 
analysis, no less than this: Must this nation be torn by 
the demon of anarchy or possessed by the genius of 
hberty? Shall we frankly confess our materiahsm and 
live by the world's base motto, " Every man for 
himseK and the de\il take the hindmost," or, by this 



CHARLES F. AKED 323 

higher motto, "Every man for his brother and God for 
us aU"? 

You have seen the monument to the forefathers which 
a grateful posterity has erected to their memory in 
Pl)anouth not far from the spot where first their brave 
feet trod. Aloft on the huge central pedestal is Faith. In 
her left hand she holds a Bible, T\dth the right she points 
to heaven. On the broad base beneath her MoraHty 
sits enthroned, looking upward to Faith and drawing her 
inspiration from her, for, as Mr. Birrell has pointed out, 
"Faith is ever your best manufacturer of good works, 
and when her furnaces are blown out MoraHty suffers." 
On another side of the base is the figure of Law, supported 
by Justice and Mercy. On a third side is Education, 
flanked by Wisdom, ripe with years, and Youth, led by 
the hand of Experience. On the remaining side is the 
figure of Freedom; with one hand she shelters Peace, by 
the other Tyranny is overthrown. These figures stand 
for the granite principles on which the fathers of New 
England founded the greatness of the commonwealth. 

Standing beneath their shadow I saw again their glori- 
ous fight for freedom. But standing on Burial Hill, 
beneath which the ashes of the heroes rest, I saw a grander 
sight. I saw right across this continent, from the Atlantic 
billows westward to the Pacific main, from the frozen 
north to the glowing south, over mountain and prairie 
and teeming city where free men live. And I saw, or 
thought I saw, further still. I saw right across the 
Atlantic Ocean, over three thousand miles of tempestuous 
sea, right back to old England, to the village of Scrooby, 
and to Brewster's farm, and to a number of hunted men 
gathered there, and John Robinson breaking to them the 



324 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

bread of life. And I saw — oh! I saw it by the eye of 
faith which alone sees right — I saw this great nation, 
with its wealth and its culture and its power, visibly 
growing up before my eyes out of the spiritual min- 
istry of John Robinson to those daring souls and their 
immovable fideUty to conscience and to God. 



THE PERMANENCE OF PURITAN PRINCIPLES 

STEWART L. WOODFORD 
Former Ambassador to Spain 

(From a speech delivered at a banquet of the New England 
Society, New York city, December, 1907.) 

In 1607 Captain John Smith and his associates landed 
at Jamestown. In July, 1609, Champlain came down, 
from Canada and mapped out the shores of the lake 
still bearing his name. In September, 1609, the Half 
Moon, a Dutch vessel, chartered by the Holland or Dutch 
East Indian Company and commanded by Henry Hudson, 
an EngHshman, came into the harbor of New York. In 
1620 the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock. Those who 
landed at Jamestown were of the gentry of England, and 
found fertile fields where they might make great planta- 
tions and lay the beginning of the southern development 
of the nation. Champlain located in a strategic point, 
strategic because it reached Canada and the north through 
a natural waterway, and yet connected naturally with 
the Great Lakes at the west. The Dutchmen who 
landed here did not need to come for conscience; they 



STEWART L. WOODFORD 32^ 

did not need to come for free thought; they did not need 
to come for free rehgion. They had all these in Holland, 
and they came for the development of a commercial 
purpose, and by a singular coincidence or good fortune 
they struck the only point that was to control the ulti- 
mate commercial supremacy of this entire continent. 
The New Englander came for conscience. He came for 
liberty in religion. He came for liberty in government, 
and under divine guidance he struck that spot where 
these things could best fructify. He struck the hard 
soil. He struck a hard climate. He struck hard condi- 
tions and land where there could only be small farms, 
and land where there must be suffering, where there 
must be thrift, where there must be industry; he struck 
on the Atlantic coast, where conscience and ideals and 
purposes were to breathe and bring forth and develop 
into their just and best ultimate. Jamestown is now a 
pleasant little spot in an almost forgotten place on the 
shores of Chesapeake Bay. Lake Champlain is visited 
by tourists, but is no center of things that are done for 
the continent. New York stands the center of the com- 
mercial supremacy of the nation, but New England has 
had the fortunate gift, the fortunate opportunity of 
being the land where ideals were bred, where purposes 
were nurtured, and from which has gone the influence 
that has controlled, does control, and will control this 
continent for centuries. 

Gentlemen, we are justly proud of our past; we are 
justly hopeful of our future. There are, there will be 
hard hours. Tide is not always high; seas are not always 
smooth; skies are not always blue; tempest and storm 
must come. The old New England faith and the old 



326 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

New England purpose and the old New England energy 
will lead in the struggle of the future and will bear our 
flag higher and further than it has ever gone, if we are 
only true to the old New England ideas. May God 
give us strength, and our children strength, to work. 
Work is honorable. May He give us strength to save; 
frugality is honorable; may He give us wise guidance, for 
wisdom is necessary. But through all, through stress and 
through prosperity, bear this thought before us : The 
repubhc will win along the old Hne of thrift, of industry, 
of brain, of conscience, or it will not win at all. 



PURITAN AND CAVALIER 

DUDLEY G. WOOTEN 
Of the Seattle, Washington, Bar ; former Congressman from Texas 

(From a commencement address at Baylor University, June ii, 
1900.) 

There have been at various epochs in American his- 
tory two prevailing types of manhood, and they have 
usually been considered as representing distinctly oppo- 
site tj^es of personal, social, and poHtical principles 
and habits of thought and action. As a matter of fact, 
the essential basis in the character of both types has 
been the same stern, stoical, unbending devotion to duty 
and principle for their own sakes as duty and principle 
appeared to each. The Puritan and the Cavaher, — 
how unlike and yet how intrinsically similar in the funda- 
mental qualities that gave consistency to their characters ! 



DUDLEY G. WOOTEN 327 

The psalm-singing saints of the time of Cromwell, 
with their names out of the genealogical tables of the 
old Bible, their pious cant, self-righteous airs, shaven 
pates, and rude scorn of all the graces and courtesies of 
life, were caricatures of that stalwart Puritanism that 
saved England from the Hcentiousness, tyranny, and 
corrupt materialism of the Stuart kings and courts. The 
Puritan faced a scoffing world with the calmness of his 
convictions, and he threw down the bloody head of a 
king as the token of his relentless courage. 

On the other hand, the rolUcking, roystering CavaHer, 
with his perfumed laces and flowing curls, his loose virtue 
and reckless daring, "all for drinking, dicing, love, and 
fighting," was the extravagant travesty of that resplen- 
dent knighthood whose loftiest aspirations were ennobled 
by the life of a Raleigh and whose tenderest chivalry was 
glorified on the death-bed of a Sydney. Beneath the 
gaudy trappings and frivolous affectation of those essenced 
Cavaliers of the olden time there beat the hearts of heroes 
and breathed the souls of martyrs. 

The golden age of America's devotion to principle for 
principle's sake was made golden and glorious by the 
same qualities that illuminate the lives of the Round- 
heads and Cavaliers of England's stormy period of revolu- 
tion and reform. The men whose names shine brightest 
and whose memories smell sweetest on the roll of the 
South's buried heroes were those who added to the Puri- 
tan's faith and constancy the Cavalier's courage and 
chivalric devotion to duty. The heart swells and the 
eyes fill as we think of that gay and gallant host that 
rode down to death from the plains and valleys of this 
beauteous land, at the call of their country's peril, in 



328 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

that dire crisis now nearly forty years ago; and it may be 
truthfully said of them all, Hving and dead, that they 
faced the carnage of battle and bore the burden of dis- 
aster and defeat with all the stoical calm of the Puritan 
martyr in his mightiest moments of consecrated zeal, 
and with all the debonair courage and daimtless devotion 
of knighthood in the knightliest age of chivalry. 

And then, when w^e come to contemplate the two 
mighty leaders w^ho led those fiery spirits to deeds of 
imperishable valor and fame, we behold the very incar- 
nation of every virtue that may adorn both types of 
manhood in their highest exhibitions of moral grandeur. 

Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee — the Castor 
and Pollux of the Southern Confederacy — the twin 
divinities of courage and constancy in that mightiest 
struggle in the crimson calendar of war since jarring 
discord shook the battlements of heaven — whose colossal 
figures loom %\'ith larger majesty through the gathering 
mists of time and distance, and on whose browns the 
shadow^s of the tomb have only heightened the halo of 
heroic splendor. It is difficult to know which was most 
to be admired, the consecrated zeal and simple sincerity 
of the one, or the Hon-hearted bravery and gentle dignity 
of the other; but taken together they represent the 
blended virtue and vigor of humanity in its sublimest 
moods of power and of Christianity in its serenest tri- 
umphs of charity and patience. When I consider the 
career of these two men in the zenith of their mature 
manhood and martial glory, I always think of the Wise 
Man's description of his Beloved, "Fair as the moon, 
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." 
With the splendid fortitude of the ancient crusader they 



WILLIAM HENRY O'CONNELL 329 

combined the fierce faith of the EngUsh Puritan and the 
lofty spirit of the typical Cavalier, while around them 
hovered the tender and reverent dignity of a cause that 
enshrined the indestructible ideals of a great-hearted 
people wilHng to do and die for its sacred behefs. Is it 
any wonder that such chieftains were the idols of those 
invincible hosts they marshaled to the fearful music of 
the battle psalm and the charge, of whom it can be 
confidently affirmed that the world has seen no such 
warriors since Cromwell's "Ironsides" swept the bloody 
fields of Naseby and Marston Moor, and Havelock's 
"Saints" rode to victory 'neath the walls of Lucknow. 



PURITAN AND CATHOLIC 

WILLIAM HENRY o'cONNELL 
Catholic Archbishop of Boston 

(From an address at the centennial celebration of the founding 
of the Diocese of Massachusetts, October 28, 1908.) 

The New England Puritan, narrow of mind and hmited 
in education, was not entirely to blame if he accepted 
the current and seemingly plausible view of the Catho- 
lics of that time. What the Catholic seemed in the mind 
of the Puritan was somewhat natural, and, seeing him 
as he did, he closed his heart to him and his kindred. He 
was to be exiled first, if caught, and upon returning he 
was to be hanged. 

The Puritan has passed; the CathoHc remains. The 
city where a century ago he came unwanted he has made 



330 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

his own. A century has materialized a prosperity and a 
growth undreamed of by his fathers. The little church 
of Boston has grown and expanded into one of the most 
prosperous and numerous provinces of the Christian 
world. The seed planted in trial and watered with tears 
has grown into a mighty tree. The virtue, the strength, 
the beauty were all in the seed — the faith of Christ 
never fails to flourish when there is air and Hght enough 
and Hberty to grow. Persecution but impedes it only 
for a while — and even while it impedes its blossoming, 
only strengthens the roots and invigorates the sap. The 
first pastor of Boston well knew this when he gave to 
his Httle church the name of Holy Cross. One hundred 
years have multiplied one Httle church into one thousand, 
two priests into two thousand, one bishop into eight, and 
the hundred faithful, courageous souls into nearly three 
millions. 

We of to-day must prove our titles by prizing them 
at their true value. We must fear no enmity and create 
none. No effort to misinterpret our labors for harmony 
must cool our ardor. No obstacles of ignorance of our 
faith nor antipathy to race must discourage us. The 
sign of the holy cross gleams high before us Cathohcs 
of Boston and New England as it did upon the banners 
of Constantine when the Church came forth from the 
catacombs to take her rightful place of glory and triumph 
among all tribes and peoples. The procession has started 
— the march toward our duty here, not merely to our- 
selves, but to our surroundings, must proceed. God 
wills it — our country demands it. '* Let the dead past 
bury its dead"; but not all the past is dead. 

The courage, the self-sacrifice, the heroism of our 



JOHN BURKE 331 

prelates and priests and ancestors will never die. When 
this city has grown ancient, when, mayhap, many other 
races from other lands, mingling with your children's 
children, gather around these altars centuries hence, as 
we do to-day, to get courage for the future by meditating 
upon what has been, the names of Boston's four great 
bishops, the pioneer priests, and the earhest CathoUcs 
will still be glorified in the history of this land and held 
in eternal benediction by all who love the blessings of 
peace and law. The glory of court and battle-field is 
but a gilded bauble compared to the eternal glory which 
true moral greatness, begot of faith, weaves for those 
who in obscurity and hardship serve faithfully God and 
country, as did the patriarchs and people of the Cathohc 
Church of New England one hundred years ago, when 
still all here was in the beginning. 



NORTH DAKOTA AND INLAND WATERWAYS 

JOHN BURKE 

Governor of North Dakota 

(Extract from a speech delivered for a meeting of the Deep Water- 
ways Commission, at Memphis, Tennessee, 1907.) 

Up in North Dakota where I Hve, the northwest is 
'way up in Canada, and 'way up in Canada North Dakota 
is 'way down south. I was in a customs office on the 
border between North Dakota and Manitoba some time 
ago v/hen a gentleman, reporting in, remarked to the 
customs official, ^'I have traveled around a great deal, 



332 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

but this is the fartherest south I have ever been in my 
Hfe before." He returned the following day. Possibly 
he feared that he could not endure the heat of our winters. 

I mention this simply to call your attention to what 
Governor Cummins said last night in his speech about 
the. great Mississippi valley being the richest grain coun- 
try in the entire world. I mention this to call your 
attention to the fact that north and west of us lies a 
great agricultural country with which we are now com- 
peting in the markets of the world. I do not know just 
where the northwest begins from Memphis, so I hardly 
know where to commence talking about the northwest; 
but if that term includes the great state of Iowa, bounded 
upon one side by the Mississippi and upon the other by 
the mighty Missouri, surely no argument is necessary 
to convince anyone of the advantages it would be to 
her commercially to have those rivers navigated. And 
then, again, another difficulty might be solved, because 
if improvement on the Missouri River was such as to 
keep the old Missouri in bounds, then the electors on 
election day would know on its boundary whether they 
were in Iowa voting for Cummins or in Nebraska voting 
for Bryan. Why, we have in North Dakota one river 
that flows down from Canada some sixty or seventy 
miles and then, apparently disgusted with the neglect 
and the indifference of the American people, it turns 
around and flows back into Canada. 

Now, my friends, is it not true that every governor who 
has appeared before you, that every speaker who has 
appeared before you, even the President of the United 
States, has told you that the railroads of this country 
could not longer handle the business of the coimtry? 



JOHN BURKE 333 

The reason is plain: Our growth and our development, 
our commercial, our agricultural and commercial indus- 
tries, have developed faster than the railroads. What 
are we to do in the premises? Which one of you is 
wilHng to see the great commercial industries of this 
country stand still until the railroads catch up? We 
have been growing and developing so fast in our state 
that we have had Uttle time for considering projects of 
this kind. But you, my Missouri friends, do you think 
that the Missourians who have come to North Dakota 
— you, my friends — do you think that the men from 
IlHnois and Iowa and from Kansas and Nebraska, who 
have come alone upon our prairies mth no friends but 
their hands and no capital but their labor, have made 
it to blossom as the rose, do you beHeve that those men 
are willing that the great industries of the state shall 
stand still until railroad development overtakes the 
developments in other lines ? No, my friends, I do not 
beheve that the patriotic people of this country, when 
they thoroughly understand what this movement means, 
will stand in the way of the accompHshment of your 
designs. I beheve that Yankee genius and Yankee push 
will solve the problem, and I beHeve that the patriotism 
of the American people will give them the opportunity. 



334 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



PEARY AND THE POLE 

SIMEON FORD 

Proprietor of the Grand Union Hotel, New York City, and a 
favorite after-dinner speaker 

(Remarks as toast-master at a dimier of hotel keepers, New 
York city, 1909.) 

The two chief happenings of the year, viewed from a 
scientific standpoint, were the finding of the North Pole 
by Commander Peary and the loss of a set of fine old 
vintage whiskers by the gifted orator who is now addressing 
you. Peary found his Pole way up at the highest spot 
in the world except the Claremont restaurant. I found 
my pole on the corner of Park Avenue and Forty-first 
Street, and it had red and white stripes around it. 

I was greatly interested in Peary's achievement because 
he lived at the Grand Union for two years before saiKng 
and always paid his board promptly. He trained there. 
He told me on the eve of his departure that after what 
he had endured at our place no hardships could daunt 
him ; that after the cold deal we gave him the Pole 
would seem sultry. 

I contributed in my humble way toward the discovery. 
I gave Peary my best wishes and a copy of that great 
work which contains the cream of my after-dinner 
speeches. Peary used to read it to the Eskimos during 
the long arctic night, and when the spring came they 
were willing and anxious to go out and risk their lives 
on the ice-floe providing Peary would shut off his flow. 

Just before Peary got there a Brooklyn gentleman 



HORACE PORTER 335 

named Cook discovered the Pole from a distance of 
several hundred miles. His eyesight had been trained, 
down at Bradley's, watching the little ivory ball drop 
into the wrong compartment. 

Scientists have demonstrated that at the time Cook 
discovered the Pole he was headed for Palm Beach and 
going strong, but chancing to glance over his shoulder 
— his left shoulder — he thought he saw something which 
smelled like a Pole. I do not care to take sides in this 
controversy, but would advise Dr. Cook to take out a 
liberal accident poHcy before hobnobbing with Com- 
mander Peary. Peary is a man of great physical strength 
and undaunted courage. I have seen him go right into 
a restaurant and take a table by a window without even 
asking the head waiter. A man who does not quail 
before a head waiter is a bird. 



THE ASSIMILATED DUTCHMAN 

HORACE PORTER 
Former United States Ambassador to France 

(From a speech before the Holland Society of New York October 
3, 1893.) 

I HAVE great admiration for Dutchmen; they always 
get to the front. When they appear in New York, they 
are always invited to seats on the roof; and when they 
go into an orchestra, they are always given one of the 
big fiddles to play; and when they march in a procession, 
they are always sure to get a little ahead of the band. 



336 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

This society differs materially from other so-called foreign 
societies. When we meet the EngUsh, we invariably 
refer to the common stock from which we sprang, but in 
the Dutch Society the stock is always preferred! And 
when a Dutchman dies, why, his funeral is like that 
fimeral of Abel, who was killed by his brother Cain — 
no one is allowed to attend unless he belongs to a first 
family. 

And it is well in this material age, when we are dwelling 
so much upon posterity, not to be altogether obHvious 
to pedigree. It has been well said that he who does not 
respect his ancestors will never be likely to achieve any- 
thing for which his descendants will respect him. Man 
learns very Httle in this world from precept; he learns 
something from experience; he learns much from example, 
and the "best teachers of humanity are the Uves of 
worthy men." 

The men from whom you sprang were well calculated 
to carry on the great work imdertaken by them. In 
the first place, in that good old land they had educated 
the conscience. The conscience never lost its hold upon 
the man. He stood as firm in his convictions as the 
rock to its base. His reHgion was a rehgion of the soul, 
and not of the senses. He might have broken the tables 
of stone upon which the laws were written; he never 
would have broken those laws themselves. He turned 
neither to the past with regret nor to the future with 
apprehension. He was a man inured to trials; practised 
in self-abnegation; educated in the severe school of 
adversity; and that little band which set out from Hol- 
land to take up its career in the new world was well 
calculated to imdertake the work which Providence had 



HORACE PORTER 337 

marked out for them. Those men had had breathed 
into their nostrils at their very birth the true spirit of 
Hberty, — that spirit of Hberty which does not mean 
unbridled license of the individual, but that spirit of 
hberty which can turn blind submission into rational 
obedience; that spirit of hberty which Hall says stifles 
the voices of kings, dissipates the mists of superstition, 
kindles the flames of art, and pours happiness into the 
laps of the people. Those men started out boldly upon 
the ocean; they paused not until they dipped the fringes 
of their banners in the waters of the western seas. 

If we may judge the future progress of this land by 
its progress in the past, it does not require that one should 
be endowed with prophetic vision to predict that in the 
near future this young but giant republic will dominate 
the policy of the world. America was not born amidst 
the mysteries of barbaric ages; and it is about the only 
nation which knows its own birthday. Woven of the 
stoutest fibers of other lands, nurtured by the commin- 
ghng of the best blood of other races, America has now 
cast off the swaddling clothes of infancy, and stands 
forth erect, clothed in robes of majesty and power, in 
which the God who made her intends that she shall 
henceforth tread the earth; and to-day she may be seen 
moving down the great highways of history, teaching by 
example; moving at the head of the procession of the 
world's events; marching in the van of ci\dlized and 
Christianized hberty, her manifest destiny to light the 
torch of liberty till it illumines the entire pathway of the 
world, and till human freedom and human rights become 
the common heritage of mankind. 



338 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

AT THREESCORE AND TEN 

MARK TWAIN 

Upon the occasion of the celebration of his seventieth 
birthday, at a dinner given in New York city, Mark 
Twain spoke as follows: 

"The seventieth birthday. It is the time of life when 
you arrive at a new and awful dignity. You can tell 
the world how you got there. I have been anxious to 
explain my own system this long time. I have achieved 
my seventy in the usual way — by sticking strictly to a 
scheme of Hfe which would kill anybody else. I will 
offer here as a sound maxim this: that we can't reach 
old age by another man's road. 

"I will now teach, offering my way of life to whom- 
soever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which 
has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman 
for seventy years. In the matter of diet I have been 
persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't 
agree with me until one or the other of us got the best 
of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last 
spring I stopped frolicking with mince" pie after mid- 
night; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. 
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one 
cigar at a time. As an example to others, and not that 
I care for moderation myself, it has always been my 
rule not to smoke when asleep and never refrain when 
awake. It is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the 
limit. I have never bought cigars with life belts around 
them. I early found that these were too expensive for 



MARK TWAIN 339 

me. I have always bought cheap cigars — reasonably 
cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four 
dollars a barrel, but my taste latterly improved, and I 
pay seven dollars now. 

"As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When 
others drink I like to keep up; otherwise I remain dry 
by habit and preference. Since I was seven I have 
seldom taken a dose of medicine and have still seldomer 
needed one. But up to seven I Hved exclusively on 
allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them; it was 
for economy. My father and I took a drug store for a 
debt, and it made cod liver oil cheaper than the other 
breakfast foods. We had nine barrels, and it lasted me 
seven years. Then I was weaned. I was the first 
Standard Oil trust: I had it all. By the time the drug 
store was exhausted my health was estabHshed. I have 
never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting, 
and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome, 
and it cannot be any benefit when you are tired. I was 
always tired. 

"I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be 
a mistake for other people to try that. Morals are like 
an acquirement — like music — no man is born with 
them. I wasn't myself; I started poor. I hadn't a 
single moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. 
It was an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and 
didn't fit anyway. But if you are careful with a thing 
and keep it in a dry place and disinfect it now and then 
and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, 
you mil be surprised to see how well it will last and how 
long it will keep sweet and inoffensive. 

"Threescore and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of 



340 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

limitations. After that you owe no active duties; for 
you the strenuous Hfe is over. You are a time-expired 
man, to use Kiphng's phrase. The previous engagement 
plea — which in forty years has cost you so many 
twinges — you can lay aside forever; on this side of the 
grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at 
thought of night and winter and the late home-coming 
from the banquet, you need only reply, 'Your invita- 
tion honors me and pleases me, because you still keep 
me in your remembrance, but I am seventy and would 
nestle in the chimney-corner and smoke my pipe and 
read my books and take my rest, wishing you well in all 
affection and that, when you in your turn shall arrive at 
Pier 70, you may step aboard your waiting ship with a 
reconciled spirit and lay your course toward the sinking 
sun with a contented heart.'" 



TEXAS AND HER FOUNDERS 

CHAMP CLARK 
Congressman from Missouri 

(Condensed from a speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives February 25, 1905.) 

Mr. Speaker: I shall attempt no panegyric upon 
Texas or upon Texans. They need none. Even if they 
did, her representatives here are amply qualified and 
always willing to sound her praises, which no tongue or 
pen can exhaust. The intense state pride which was 
erstwhile characteristic in an extraordinary degree of Vir- 



CHAMP CLARK 341 

ginians, South Carolinians, and Massachusetts people is 
eclipsed by that of the citizens of the Lone Star State. 
They are fully justified in that laudable feeHng, for state 
pride is patriotism. Here is a fine mot by Henry Ward 
Beecher: "When I see a man who has nothing good to 
say of the place he came from, I want to know what 
mean thing he did there." Most assuredly the great 
preacher would have had no occasion to complain of a 
Texan on that score, for he is as thoroughly enamored 
of his state as is any youth of his sweetheart or any man 
of his wife. In his eyes she is perfection itself. His 
passion for her approximates idolatry. And who shall 
blame him for his towering pride in and his undying 
affection for that mammoth commonwealth? With a 
most glorious past, with a most prosperous present, 
Texas faces a future to which none but the greatest of 
the major prophets and the subhmest of the epic poets 
could do justice. It makes even a hard-headed, unimag- 
inative outside admirer and friend dizzy to contemplate 
by the eye of faith the Texas that is to be. So I reluc- 
tantly leave Texas to the Texans on this occasion, though 
no orator could desire a nobler theme. 

The law gives to each state the right to erect in Statuary 
Hall the statues of two, and only two, of her distinguished 
citizens; Texas to-day presents the statue of Stephen 
Fuller Austin, to stand forever as one of her chosen 
representatives in that group of renowned historic char- 
acters. As his companion in perpetual glory she dedi- 
cates General Sam Houston, statesman, soldier, orator, 
"the liberator of Texas," than whom even good Sir 
Walter himself never drew a more fascinating, a more 
romantic, or a braver figure. 



342 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

There is no chapter in the annals of mankind more 
thriUing than the story of how Texans won their freedom. 
Dull must be the brain, cold must be the heart, of him 
who can think of the heroism at Goliad, at the Alamo, 
and at San Jacinto, and not rejoice at being kindred in 
blood, in faith, in aspiration, and in the sacred love of 
liberty to the unconquerable men who fought and bled 
and died upon those bloody fields. From the ground 
which they immortalized and glorified by their sufferings 
and their valor Texas sprang full armed, as Minerva 
from the brain of Jove. So long as courage and fortitude 
are prized among men, so long as the hope of freedom 
endures, the names of Houston, Austin, Bowie, Travis, 
Burleson, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Sidney Sherman, Deaf 
Smith, and Davy Crockett will be cherished as house- 
hold words. 

I love to think of the bold, adventurous men who 
blazed the pathway of civilization across the continent 
to the shores of the peaceful ocean. They, and not the 
politicians of this era, made this a world power. We 
owe them a debt of gratitude which we can never repay 
except by being model citizens. They had none of the 
ordinary incentives to high endeavor. They acted their 
parts in a rude age, upon an obscure stage, far from the 
teeming centers of population and publicity, with no 
Boswell to follow at their heels to record their words, 
with no newspaper correspondents to blazon their deeds. 
No trumpet of fame sounded in their ears, cheering them 
on in their onerous, hazardous, self-appointed task; but 
they wrought nobly for their country and their kind. 



CHARLES A. CULBERSON 343 



THE BATTLE-SHIP "TEXAS" 

CHARLES A. CULBERSON 

Senior United States Senator from Texas 

(A speech made in the presentation of a silver service, secured 
through voluntary subscriptions by the people of Texas, to the 
battle-ship Texas, February 21, 1897.) 

In every period of historic time sailors have won 
imperishable renown, elevated the standard of patriotism, 
and helped to mark the boundaries of empires. At 
Salamis, nearly five centuries before the Christian era, 
Grecian civilization moved onward through the most 
important naval battle of ancient times. Actium gave 
to Octavius the mastery of the world, and that epoch 
became immortal with the birth of the Roman empire. 
From then through successive centuries naval engage- 
ments are woven deeply into the annals of nations and 
of civilization, and since the middle ages no country has 
exerted a more powerful influence upon the human race 
than England, whose naval history is a continuous path 
of glory. Nelson, with the battle-cry of "Victory or 
Westminster Abbey!" was a greater genius than Marl- 
borough or Wellington, and the victories of the Nile and 
Trafalgar in commanding consequences take rank with 
Blenheim and Waterloo. In the American Revolution 
and the War of 181 2, none surpassed the sailors in intre- 
pidity and devotion to Uberty in battles where Jones, 
Decatur, and Perry wrought undying fame. Our great 
Civil War, largely confined to land operations and 
surpassingly rich in the valor of its soldiery, yet gave 



344 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

opportunity for gallant and conspicuous naval service. 
Farragut added unfading luster to American arms, and 
Raphael Semmes will be remembered as long as genius 
and heroism shall inspire mankind. Mindful of this 
mighty influence upon history, we are proud that the 
name of Texas is Hnked with the naval power of the 
repubHc. This power is symboHc of the strength and 
the majesty of the Government, and is one of those great 
forces that in times of national peril would preserve 
liberty and perpetuate the Union. Loving peace with 
its multiphed blessings, yet prepared for war, it would 
proclaim the inviolabihty of American citizenship on 
every sea, constitute the flag its safeguard, and resist 
every character of foreign aggression as the highest 
assurance that republican institutions shall not perish 
from the earth. 

We commit to you and American sailors the name 
of Texas, a name yet unsulHed and stainless, a name 
unspeakably precious to us, a name which passed almost 
in ecHpse at San Antonio and Goliad, emerged from 
gloom and darkness at Concepcion, shone with effulgence 
at San Jacinto, and now Hghts with steady splendor the 
destiny of a great people. 



JOSEPH W. BAILEY 345 

TEXAS — UNDIVIDED AND INDIVISIBLE 

JOSEPH W. BAILEY 

United States Senator from Texas 

(From a speech delivered in the United States Senate, January, 
1906.) 

Throughout this discussion we have heard many and 
varied comments upon the magnitude of Texas. Some 
senators have expressed a friendly soHcitude that we 
would some day avail ourselves of the privilege accorded 
us by the resolutions under which we entered the Union, 
and divide our state into five states. 

Mr. President, if Texas had contained a population in 
1845 sufl&cient to have justified her admission as five 
states, it is my opinion that she would have been so 
admitted. I will even go further than that; I will say 
that if Texas were now five states, there would not be 
five men in either state who would seriously propose 
the consolidation into one. But, sir, Texas is not divided 
now, and under the providence of God she will not be 
divided until the end of time. Her position is excep- 
tional, and excites in the minds of all her citizens a just 
and natural pride. She is now the greatest of all the 
states in area, and certain to become the greatest of all 
in population, wealth, and influence. With such a 
primacy assured her, she could not be expected to sur- 
render it, even to obtain increased representation in this 
body. 

But, Mr. President, while from her proud eminence 
to-day Texas looks upon a future as bright with promise 



346 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

as ever beckoned a people to follow where fate and for- 
tune lead, it is not so much the promise of the future as 
it is the memory of the glorious past which appeals to 
her against division. She could partition her fertile 
valleys and broad prairies, she could apportion her thriv- 
ing towns and growdng cities, she could distribute her 
splendid population and wonderful resources, but she 
could not divide the fadeless glory of those days that 
are past and gone. To which of her daughters, sir, 
could she assign, without irreparable injustice to all the 
others, the priceless inheritance of the Alamo, Goliad, 
and San Jacinto? To which could she bequeath the 
name of Houston, Austin, Fannin, Bowie, and Crockett? 
Sir, the fame of these men, and their less illustrious but 
not less worthy comrades, cannot be severed. Their 
names are written upon the tablets of her grateful memory, 
so that all time shall not efface them. The story of their 
mighty deeds, which rescued Texas from the condition 
of a despised and oppressed Mexican province and made 
her a free and independent repubHc, still rouses the 
blood of her men like the sound of a trumpet, and we 
would not forfeit the right to repeat it to our children 
for many additional seats in this august assembly. 

The world has never seen a sublimer courage or a 
more unselfish patriotism than that which illuminates 
almost every page in the early history of Texas. Students 
may know more about other battle-fields, but none is 
consecrated with the blood of braver men than those 
who fell at GoHad. Historians may not record it as one 
of the decisive battles of the world, but the victory of 
the Texans at San Jacinto is destined to exert a greater 
influence upon the happiness of the human race than all 



JAMES B. CLARK 347 

the conflicts that estabKshed or subverted the petty 
kingdoms of the ancient world. Poets have not yet 
immortalized it with their enduring verse, but the Alamo 
is more resplendent with her heroic sacrifice than was 
Thermopylae itself, because while "Thermopylae had its 
messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none." 

Mr. President, if I may be permitted to borrow Web- 
ster's well-known apostrophe to Liberty and Union, I 
would say of Texas: She is one and inseparable, now 
and forever. 



PATRIOTISM AND THE SOUTH 

JAMES B. CLARK 
Late Proctor of the University of Texas 

(The concluding part of a Fourth of July address, dehvered at 
Pace's Spring, Texas, 1877.) 

I HOLD that patriotism is but the manifestation of a 
broad and generous selfishness. It begins at the hearth- 
stone, thence it extends to our neighbor w^hom we know 
— widens through the country — embraces the state — 
and pauses not till the far-circling wave of affection touches 
the uttermost limits of that land which we call "our 
country." We love it because it is our fatherland, as 
the Germans beautifully and fitly express it; because we 
make its laws and elect its rulers; because the honored 
dust of our forefathers lies beneath its sod; because it is 
ours, to have and to hold unto us and our heirs forever ! 

After a long and weary voyage, his good ship now 



34^ AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

assailed by the tempest and anon becalmed in pestilential 
seas, the sailor casts anchor in the safe and placid waters 
of his chosen harbor. As he gazes upon broken bulwark, 
tattered sail, and severed mast, he thanks God that the 
storm has rolled away, that peaceful breezes blow, and 
cloudless skies once more bend above him. Nor does 
he mar the present hour with vain regrets or hopeless 
repinings. To-day is his, the future lies before, and with 
manly courage he turns to meet the duties which con- 
front him then and there. 

Disorganized and distorted by a tremendous conflict, 
the fair form of republican government was for a time 
but the wreck of its nobler self. But to-day the chains 
are stricken from long-fettered limbs, the invincible prin- 
ciples of free government have triumphed at last, and the 
Blue and the Gray alike are ready to do honor to that 
flag upon whose folds now shines with equal luster every 
star in the constellation of the states. A new era dawns 
before us. Old issues are dead and buried out of sight, 
and none are strong enough, even if any were mad enough, 
to revive them. We will build monuments, if you please, 
above them to hold the record of what part they once 
played in the drama of our national life. Ever and anon 
memory may revisit the scene, scattering flowers over 
lonely moimds or twining garlands around the monu- 
mental shaft; yet it is the present with its duties which 
we must confront. There is work enough for brain and 
heart. We stand but upon the threshold of vast pos- 
sibilities in science, art, education, agriculture, intel- 
lectual, moral, and physical development. Watch the 
grand procession of the states. With steady tramp and 
equal step it moves. Only one himdred and one years 



GEORGE PIERCE GARRISON 349 

old, yet abreast with nations that were hoary with age 
before the sturdy colonist fired that first shot "heard 
round the world." Forward, then, in the great work. 
As Texans, we should be no laggards in the race. We 
build for the future; and, however humble the individual 
part, it is full of honor and proud results. And so, 
assembled here beneath the green arches of this forest 
cathedral whose choir is the song of birds, the murmur 
of the breeze, and the roar of the storm, "heart within, 
and God o'erhead," let us pledge ourselves anew to the 
preservation of those principles and the use of those 
agencies through which alone we may remain a free and 
happy people. 



TRIBUTE TO JAMES B. CLARK 

GEORGE PIERCE GARRISON 
Laie Professor of History in the University of Texas 

(Condensed from an address delivered at the University of Texas 
April 12, 1909.) 

No other man has ever so completely won the hearts 
of the faculty and students of this University, nor is it 
likely that any other will ever reach the same preemi- 
nence in their affectionate regard as James B. Clark. 

Judge Clark was a splendid example of the old type 
of the Southern gentleman. With him, hospitality, 
courtliness, and integrity were so natural that they 
seemed to be the result of instinct rather than of training. 



350 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

A graduate of Harvard, alert-minded, traveled, and 
widely read, he acquired an unusual degree of culture, 
and his power to charm by conversation was almost 
without limit. Following the lead of his convictions, he 
joined the Confederate army in 1861, and bore himself 
throughout the Civil War like a man and a soldier; but, 
while he cherished the memories of the great conflict, 
he always thought of it as ended at Appomattox. He 
had learned too much of the men of the North to suppose 
that they were by nature either better or worse than 
others; and perhaps the most memorable and enjoyable 
occasion of his later years was that of the reunion of 
his class at Harvard, in 1905, on the fiftieth anniversary 
of its graduation. 

One secret of Judge Clark's hold on the students was 
that they believed he always understood them. He 
passed threescore and ten, and the external marks of 
age showed themselves upon him in many ways; but he 
never grew old enough to lose the students' point of 
view. Courageous yet modest, tender yet manly, sympa- 
thetic yet unobtrusive, plain-spoken yet never offensive, 
he knew how to reach every heart, to serve all, and to 
bring some good into every hfe whose Hues crossed those 
of his own. How many a student there was in whom 
he quickened the dead sense of duty and of aspiration, 
how many he stimulated to stronger efforts with nobler 
aims, it would be impossible to tell. 

Though teaching was not included by name among his 
duties. Judge Clark was one of the foremost teachers 
that have ever held a place in this University. The 
great lesson he taught to faculty and students alike, 
and to all who had eyes to see and ears to hear, was how 



GEORGE PIERCE GARRISON 351 

to live. Realizing fully the seriousness of life, and thor- 
oughly awake to all its duties and responsibilities, he still 
never allowed it to become a burden. With no vain 
regrets for the mistake or the misfortune of yesterday, 
and no paralyzing forecast of evil for to-morrow, by 
doing faithfully the work of the moment, he lived in 
constant preparation for the best or the worst that fate 
might bring. 

There was never a happier choice than that which 
brought Judge Clark to the service of the University. 
This, however, must be understood in a larger sense than 
could have been fully appreciated at the time of his 
election. Some other person might perhaps have dis- 
charged as well, or even better, the various duties of 
detailed routine which were assigned to him; but that 
is a matter of relatively small consequence. It is suffi- 
cient to say that he attended to them conscientiously 
and satisfactorily. The essential thing is that he entered, 
as probably no one else could have done, into the life 
of the University as an uplifting force at a time when it 
needed ideals and inspiration more than perfect clerical 
machinery. It is by this that we shall remember him, 
and for this that the hearts of ten thousand men and 
women who are the better because he was here have 
been drawn to him in loving gratitude. 

Fitly he lived and fitly did he die. Here in the Uni- 
versity auditorium, where many an annually recurring 
commencement had left him dear and tender memories, 
and where the marble tablets on the wall speak mutely 
of his beloved associates gone before, he fell and breathed 
his last. Even the King of Shadows loved him, and 
laid him painlessly to rest. Thank God for his life and 



352 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

for the gracious gentleness of his death. Further we 
are not troubled; for we believe that, having crossed the 
bar, he sees the Pilot "face to face." 



THE UNIVERSITY — A SACRED TRUST 

THOMAS ULVAN TAYLOR 
Professor of Civil Engineering in the University of Texas 

(From an address delivered at the University of Texas March 2, 
1910.) 

To-day we celebrate the independence of Texas, but 
let us not forget the fact that the day of the independence 
of her University is yet to be celebrated. It has had 
its trials in the past, and will have them in the future. 
But we must remember that for three-fourths of a cen- 
tury the University in its broad sense has triumphed 
over many obstacles; that it survived through times that 
changed principaHties and powers, and yet it lived to 
celebrate one year ago its silver union to the hearts of 
the people. It triumphed over those that would have 
taken the young child's life, and to-day its feet are planted 
solidly on its native soil. If it falls now, it will not fall 
by the dart hurled by the hand of its would-be assassin, 
but on account of the dart withheld from its defense by 
the hands of its friends. Waterloo was lost by the non- 
arrival of a friend. Remember that the blood of Milam 
and of that host of deathless dead was shed that you might 
live in a better state and under a more peaceful sky. 
And I would have the nine thousand ex-students of the 
University remember that they, too, belong to the army 



THOMAS ULVAN TAYLOR 353 

of the loyal. It is the duty of every loyal son and daugh- 
ter of the orange and white to render fiUal service, not 
with the blind fanaticism of the follower of a fetish, but 
with an enhghtened and firm and absolute conviction that 
the University is one of the greatest agents of good that 
the state maintains. 

It was founded to help promote, foster, and perfect 
the ideal conditions of government and Hf e — that of 
pure democracy. It would seem strange if the very 
institution for which men gave up so much in the behef 
that it would be influential in estabHshing these condi- 
tions should fail in its exalted mission. Fellow comrades 
of the rank and file, let us examine ourselves to-day and 
ask if we are keeping the faith of the fathers. Remember 
that you are the children of the state, that the fathers 
left you a legacy and a heritage that you might be a 
better man and a better woman and that we might have 
a better country. It was to no order of nobiHty to 
which you succeeded, but to a democracy of the people 
inside and outside of the University. I trust that the 
day will never come when a man in this University does 
not take his rank according to his individual merit and 
deserts. This nation stands among the nations of the 
world as a beacon Hght of democracy set on a hill, and 
the University of its largest state should have a democ- 
racy so pure that snobbery cannot lift its polluting head. 
If the University makes its students feel that they are 
superior to their fellows; if it makes them imagine that 
they are anointed to a holier sphere than the less for- 
tunate, then God save the commonwealth and God save 
the University, for the faith of the fathers has been 
betrayed. - - 



354 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

"Our fathers' faith 
May you keep till death; 
Their fame in its cloudless splendor, 
As men who stand for their fatherland, 
And die — but never surrender/' 

The fathers left you a birthright — sell it not for a 
mess of pottage. Train yourselves to be the citizens of 
the state, and to render her your fiHal service and ever 
be ready to respond to the call of your alma mater. The 
call may come, and when it does every loyal son and 
daughter should rush to the ranks. Israel lay prostrate 
at the foot of the conqueror — her institutions and laws 
despised, and her flag trailing in the dust. The angel of 
the Lord took a Hve coal of fire from the altar itself, 
flew to the abode of the great prophet, and applying it 
to his lips, called him to the leadership of his country. 
The prophet, seeing his country bleeding and sore, replied, 
"Here am I, Lord, send me." If the cause of your 
alma mater or your state ever becomes desperate, may 
the spirits of Lamar and Houston, of Roberts and Gould, 
of Leslie Waggener and James B. Clark act as a live 
coal of fire upon your lips, and may your reply be that 
of the prophet, "Here am I, send me." 



INVASION OF THE NORTH BY THE SOUTH 

JACOB M. DICKINSON 
Secretary of War 

(Extract from a speech deUvered at a banquet of the New York 
Southern Society, New York city, December 8, 1909.) 

President Taft in a recent speech at Columbus, 
Mississippi, said, "In order to understand the Southern 



JACOB M. DICKINSON 355 

people, especially with respect to issues of the war and 
what grew out of it, in order to understand their present 
position, one must know that your hearts and emotions 
are broad enough to entertain entire loyalty to the issues of 
the past, which you fought so nobly to sustain, and entire 
loyalty to our present Government, for which you would 
be wilhng to lay down your life if occasion required it." 

Therefore I trust that I shall cause no disappointment 
if I do not make the eagle scream in ecstasy by the fervor 
of my patriotic utterances as a Southerner, and if I seem 
to decline upon a lower plane in asking your attention 
to some thoughts suggested by the invasion of the North 
by the South. Do not take alarm and suppose that I 
am going to fight over the campaigns of Lee. I have 
in mind an invasion entirely peaceable, and conquests 
that are civic. 

Hard upon the reestabhshment of peace follo'v\ing the 
Civil War, began the invasion of the North by Southern- 
ers. These men had no endo^vmients but abihty, hope, 
courage, the discipline of the beneficent school of poverty, 
and the high ideals of manly bearing and personal honor 
that were their birthright. They had been schooled in 
misfortune, but were untrained in humility. This is 
well illustrated by the joint debate between two negro 
pohticians, one a Repubhcan and the other — as rare as 
a black swan — a Democrat. The Repubhcan champion 
excoriated the Southern Democrats for their aggressions 
upon the Repubhcan preserv^es of pohtical domina- 
tion, and denounced them as arrogant rebels. The 
Democratic orator reproached him for his revengeful 
spirit and said that he might have learned a lesson in 
forgiveness from the story of the prodigal son who had 



3S6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

left his father's house and "wasted his substance in riotous 
Hving." His father upon his return did not reproach him, 
but killed in his honor "the fatted calf." The other 
retorted, ^'Yes, fellow citizens, but how did that prodigal 
act ? He was ashamed and stood afar off and had to be 
persuaded; but these Southern fellows walk right in and 
say, 'Whar is that veal?'" 

However they went about it, the men of the South 
have been plenteously supplied in the North with veal 
and all other good things, and this would have been 
impossible but for the generous sympathy, help, and con- 
fidence extended to them by the people with whom they 
had cast their fortunes. 

It is generally accepted that the Civil War was a con- 
test between people of Northern blood on the one side 
and those of Southern blood on the other. This is a 
great error. We are slow to look beyond generahties 
to the essential truth. All now with tardy justice declare 
that Hancock was right when he said the tariff was a 
local question. The Civil War was a war between the 
states, but as to the participants, it was mainly a local 
question. Senator Daniel summed up the case of most 
of them when he said, "I knew that my people were 
in a row and I went in to help them." There were 
seventeen brigadier-generals, four major-generals, and one 
lieutenant-general in the Southern army who were born 
in Northern states. Of these, seven were born in the 
state of New York. Hotchkiss, the engineer who made 
the battle-sketches for Stonewall Jackson, was a New 
Englander. Eighty of the graduates of West Point who 
entered the Confederate army were born in non-seceding 
states. 



JACOB M. DICKINSON 357 

But there was reciprocity on our part. Kentucky 
brought forth the central figure of the epoch, Abraham 
Lincohi. Virginia gave birth to Thomas, the Rock of 
Chickamauga, and Tennessee produced Farragut, the 
greatest of the admirals. Early in the war the com- 
manding general of the Northern army was a Virginian 
and the ranking officer of the Confederate army was a 
New Yorker. 

Americans have a common and equal heritage. The 
various sections can best show forth their worth and 
sustain a patent to superior citizenship, not by vaimtings 
nor by reproaches as to the past, but by excelHng in 
generous rivalry in serving our country, illustrating the 
highest quaUties of patriotism and striving to secure 
and perpetuate personal freedom — not the freedom of 
Ucense — but freedom of thought, opinion, and action, 
regulated by general law; maintain "justice, the per- 
fected law of truth, through courts with impartial judges 
and juries open to all alike, where weakness and poverty 
are as potent as power and wealth," and keeping our 
repubhc in a career that will conserve for the longest 
time the rich blessings which it is now showering upon 
humanity. 



3S8 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THE "SOLID SOUTH" 

CHARLES W. DABNEY 
President of the University of Cincinnati 

(Extract from an address at the commencement of the Univer- 
sity of Alabama, and repeated by request at the commencement of 
the Central University of Kentucky, 1909.) 

Is it not clear that the times are ripe for a new poKtical 
alignment in the South ? Certainly the hour has struck 
for the independent man, the man who will think, to 
decide and act for himself. To such independent think- 
ing and acting, not to the support of any pohtical party, 
I call these young men. From such as these and their 
fellows all over the South will again arise leaders, who 
will take over into the national consciousness the best 
virtues, if not all the doctrines, of the old South. For it 
is not creeds, but character, not doctrines, but deeds 
that count in this world. And first of all those virtues 
is the virtue of loyalty. 

What, then, is the mission of the independent voter in 
the South to-day? Shall he, for example, use his vote 
to break the "Solid South"? He will not feel justified 
in doing this merely to put an end to poHtical isolation, 
stagnation, and intolerance, serious though these evils 
be. He might not see his way clear to do so merely to 
permit freer political action, give a chance for a second 
political party, and so secure more progressive state 
legislation, and prevent corruption, important as all 
these things are. He would scarcely be willing to do so, 
merely to get into the national game and give our young 



CHARLES W. DABNEY 359 

men a vent for their political energy, and a share in the 
nation's thought and progress, desirable as this un- 
doubtedly is. I do not think the sincere patriot would 
be satisfied with any one, or perhaps all, of these reasons. 
The"SoHd South" stood for principles far more important, 
much deeper than the considerations here named. The 
earnest man, not an opportunist, will want to see ulti- 
mate ends of more vital importance than these before 
he will break with these old traditions. To all such I 
commend the historic testimony of the South as a cause 
fully worthy of their devotion. What better can the 
sincere Southerner do than continue to help maintain 
the testimony of the fathers since they landed on this 
continent, the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon race since 
the beginning of its history — this testimony for the 
freedom of the individual to govern himself, his family, 
his town, and his state? Forgetting the wild economic 
theories of recent years, forgetting secession and slavery, 
too, let our yoimg men never forget that the original 
*' Solid South" stood for the rights of the state, for the 
right of self-government everywhere as opposed to cen- 
tralization and imperialism. Just as our fathers in the 
Revolution were fighting the battles of Englishmen 
everywhere, as all Englishmen cordially acknowledge 
now, so our fathers in the war between the states were 
fighting the battle of state governments everyiA^here. 

Young gentlemen of Alabama and the South, I have 
sought to show you how, through a long historical process, 
every step of which was characterized by pathetic and 
yet glorious loyalty to what seemed for forty years a 
lost national cause, your fathers preserved for us the 
ideals of free government for which their fathers, grand- 



360 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

fathers, and great-grandfathers gave their lives. Few 
chapters of history reveal more clearly than this sad 
story of the South the glorifying discipline of defeat, and 
the divine philosophy which commands that the truth 
must be crucified to draw all men unto it. Failure to 
win visible success idealized and glorified this cause for 
your faithful fathers, and inspired them to work for its 
realization in the far-ofi future. In the providence of the 
great God, who overrules all things in this world, you 
are now called upon to take up the task where your fathers 
laid it down. You are called to carry on the struggle in 
order that their glorious ideals of free government may 
be reahzed, not merely in our beloved South, but in this 
whole nation. 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY 

ROBERT L. TAYLOR 
United States Senator from Tennessee 

(Extract from an address prepared for delivery at a banquet 
held at Evansville, Indiana, October 10, 1899, the occasion being 
a reiinion of the Blue and the Gray. This selection is taken, by 
permission, from "Love Letters to the PubUc," copyrighted by 
John F. Draughon.) 

A PATRIOT is a citizen who loves his coimtry, whether 
he fives in the North or in the South; therefore every man 
who honorably wore the blue, and every man who honestly 
wore the gray, in that struggle which tried the soul of 
men, was a patriot. 

The Blue visited the South once uninvited, and the 



ROBERT L. TAYLOR 361 

Gray showed them some of our Southern mineral resources 
in the shape of muskets and cannon. The Gray now 
Ln\ites the Blue to come hither and see our mountains 
of crude metal which we are manufacturing into pig iron 
to be converted into plowshares and reapers instead of 
muskets and bayonets. \ATiat we want now is not the 
blood of the Blue, but their money. The South panteth 
after their pocketbooks even ''as the hart panteth after 
the water brooks.'' The Gray boys once swapped the 
Blue boys tobacco for coffee; they are now anxious to 
exchange coal and iron and timber lands for cash. They 
once built forts; they now want factories. They stand 
among the tombstones of their comrades, true to their 
dead for what they were, yet loyal to the Union for what 
it is. They kneel among their mommients to kiss the 
Stars and Bars hi their devotion to the glorious past; 
they rise to salute the Stars and Stripes and to pledge 
their devotion to the Union through all the glorious 
future. The hands that once wielded the sword and the 
musket have built a new civilization on the ashes of the 
old. I do not mean to say that there is a new South; 
it is the grand old South rejuvenated by its own matchless 
courage and industry. WTiere once the angry columns 
met and chnched and rolled together in the bloody mire, 
new cities have sprung up, like beautiful flowers blossom- 
LQg in the huge footprints of war. WTiere once curled 
the white smoke of hostile guns in phantom towers and 
columns, high above the dead and d^dng heroes of the 
Blue and the Gray, now the gay cotton fields wave their 
white handkerchiefs of peace in flirtation with the bashful 
fields of corn; and the big ripe ears grin among the fodder 
blades and sigh, ''Oh shucks!" 



362 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

My ideal of a Southern patriot is the man who bravely 
wore the gray until his flag went down in tears and blood 
at Appomattox, and then accepted the decision of war 
in good faith and went home to become a loyal American 
citizen and to rebuild his desolated country; my ideal 
of a Northern patriot is the man who bravely wore the 
blue until the struggle was over, and then laid aside the 
paraphernalia of war and went home to help restore not 
only the Union of the states, but the fraternal relations 
of the sections; my ideal of American patriotism is the 
reunion of the Blue and the Gray for the purpose of 
cementing all sections of our common country together 
forever. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH 

EDWIN A. ALDERMAN 
President of tlie University of Virginia 

(The concluding part of a Charter Day address at the Univer- 
sity of California, March 23, 1906.) 

The South has changed the emphasis of its thought 
from personahty to social and industrial progress. It 
has made the change that every country makes that 
passes from the patriarchal to more complex forms of 
life. Its insistence is to be upon community effort, upon 
civic progress, upon general well-being rather than upon 
individualism. It has entered for good or ill upon its 
probation as a member of the modern world. 

It is still conservative and idealistic. It still believes 
in God, reads Walter Scott, and votes the Democratic 



EDWIN A. ALDERMAN 363 

ticket, a trinity of somewhat unequal virtues, I must 
confess; and it does this without fear of punishment — 
or hope of reward. It is still fortunate in the raw material 
of its citizenship, whether it issues out of old stocks, 
sobered and dignified by endurance and suffering, or out 
of the ranks of the plain people who inherit the EngHsh 
consciousness. Its cry is for men to help realize its 
highest self in life and law in the spirit of the modern 
world. 

The Southern boy of this generation has found himself 
at last in American life, and made himself at home at the 
moment when the repubhc has most need of his tem- 
pered strength. He is a fine, hopeful figure, this Southern 
boy whom I know so well, of strong, high political instincts, 
facing tardily a fierce industrialism and a new democ- 
racy with its grandeurs and temptations, his ambitions 
and dreams moving about them and yet holding fast 
through the conservatism in his blood to the noble con- 
cepts of public probity and scorn of dishonor. 

There may be something parochial, but there is also 
something fine and impressive in the almost Hebraic 
feeling of the people of the Southern states that their 
section has something high and precious and distinctive 
in manhood and leadership to contribute to American 
civilization. It cannot be mere boasting, so runs their 
dream, that it is the logical right of their land to bring 
forth out of her travail and her agony something fair 
and good of her own likeness and pattern, the old refined 
gold which disaster and defeat could not tarnish, beaten 
by fiercer, freer civic forces into finer and subtler form. 

The spirit of his fathers, brave and steadfast men who 
held firm and did not compromise, ought to be in him 



364 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

and shall be in him. Sordidness and commercialism will 
not wholly submerge him and wear away his fineness. 
He will love honor more than life, and loyalty more than 
gold. A worldly modern, a clear-eyed man breathing 
the breath of freedom, he will reach men's hearts and he 
will control men's wills not by machinery, but by the 
strength of integrity and sincerity and their faith in his 
words. And so when the age of moral warfare shall 
succeed to the age of passionate gain getting; when bhnd 
social forces have wrought some tangle of inequahty and 
injustice, of hatred and suspicion; when calculation and 
combination can only weave the web more fiercely; when 
the whole people in some hour of national peril shall 
seek for the man of heart and faith, who will not falter 
nor fail, in the sweet justice of God, hither they shall 
turn for succor as they once turned to a simple Virginia 
planter to free them from a stupid king and a stubborn 
parliament across the seas. 



THE CIVIL V —AND AFTER 

WILLIE -DON McCABE 

Orator and E<. y>f Richmond, Virginia 

(Extract from a spec , p. "Puritan and Cavalier," delivered 
at a banquet of the Ne and Society December 22, 1899.) 

For years after r i /il War — those dreadful years 

of Reconstruction, ^^ all our Southern land, that for 

four long years hac girdled with steel and fire, still 

lay prostrate in \ old Isaiah fitly terms the "dim- 



WILLIAM GORDON McCABE 365 

ness of anguish" — press, pulpit, and political rostrum, 
North and West, persistently demanded of us a thing 
impossible to men in whose veins coursed the blood 
of the old champions of freedom, and who had been 
nurtured in those principles that, since the days of Runny- 
mede, have been the common heritage of all English- 
speaking folk — that we must prove the sincerity of our 
acceptance by confessing the unrighteousness of our con- 
tention and by expressing humble contrition for our 
misdeeds. 

This the South steadily refused to do with an unshaken 
resolution, worthy to touch a responsive chord in the 
breast of the sturdiest Puritan ever born under the shadow 
of Plymouth Rock. It did touch such a chord in the 
hearts of some of your bravest and best, who in those 
dark days of doubt and suspicion, when it required no 
mean courage to do so, stood up, and with that antique 
Puritan fearlessness that has ever scorned "to sell the 
truth to serve the hour," pro( aimed their belief that the 
word of brave men of their ' n blood should be trusted 
fully by the nation. 

The first plea for genuine 1 ^illation, the first expres- 
sion of absolute confidence plighted word, came 
from New England; fitly enoi om Lexington, on the 
one hundredth anniversary o 'birth of the nation, 
and fell from the lips of a Pu of the Puritans, yet 
withal as knightly in his gent. irtesy and splendid 
daring as any cavalier who ev* e at the bridle-rein 
of Rupert of the Rhine — Era ^ ^flartlett, of Massa- 
chusetts, who never forgot that strous day to the 
Federal arms at Port Hudsc ien, riding in at 
the head of his men — he the ' mounted oflScer 



366 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

in the assaulting column — he distinctly heard the 
Confederate ofl&cer commanding in his immediate front, 
touched with generous admiration of his foeman's 
reckless daring, shouting to his men, "For God's 
sake, men, don't shoot as brave a chap as that," 
and so for a time this Puritan-Cavalier rode unharmed 
into that hell of fire. 

But it needed, I think, the splendid object-lessons given 
by Southern men in the Spanish- American War to silence 
forever the cavils and doub tings of many austere patriots 
who for thirty years and more had proved themselves 
"as invincible in peace as they had been invisible in 
war." Above the first fierce mutterings of the coming 
storm rose high and clear, yonder at Havana, the voice of 
Fitzhugh Lee, grandson of "Light-Horse Harry," demand- 
ing with soldierly directness prompt Spanish recognition 
of the sanctity of American citizenship. Then, when the 
die was cast, and the Olympia, on that memorable May 
morning, stood into Manila Bay, on the bridge close 
alongside of George Dewey, of Vermont, stood "Tom" 
Brumby, of Georgia (God rest his noble soul!) — and so, 
when the American flag was first unfurled to the breeze 
over the first American possession in the eastern world, 
the son of an old Confederate colonel stood at the hal- 
liards. Ten days later, at Cardenas, the first crimson 
libation of the war was poured out on the altar of Cuban 
liberty, and the brave young blood of that gallant lad, 
Worth Bagley, of the Old North state, son, too, of an 
old Confederate soldier, cemented forever the recon- 
ciliation between North and South. And as in quick 
succession the names of Hobson and Blue and "Fighting 
Joe" Wheeler blazed in ofl&cial despatches, the thunderous 



ROBERT w. Mclaughlin 367 

shouts of a reunited people drowned even the *' iron- 
throated plaudits of the guns." 

As Marshal Ney said when he saw the beardless young 
French conscripts rushing in all the joyous valor of their 
youth upon the Russian guns at Weissenfels, "C'est dans 
le sang! C'est dans le sang." It's in the blood! It's 
in the blood! 



THE CIVIL WAR IN RETROSPECT 

ROBERT w. Mclaughlin 
Pastor of the Park Slope Congregational Church, Brooklyn, New York 

(The concluding part of a sermon on "The Relation of Grant to 
Lincoln," first delivered on Memorial Sunday, 1909, and by request 
repeated in 1910.) 

As I review in retrospect the days of Lincoln and Grant 
and Lee, two thoughts come to me. The first is, these 
battle-fields in the Southland are the priceless heritage 
of the nation. The defeats of the one and the victories 
of the other are blended. Lee and Grant are but types, 
huge and heroic to be sure, of a devotion unsurpassed in 
the annals of the race. Behind them marched two mil- 
lions of the bravest men that ever trod the earth. The 
blue and the gray of their uniforms have merged again 
into the red, white, and blue of our flag. They wrote 
the epic poems of the nation. The breast of nature was 
the parchment. The young blood of their veins was the 
ink. The cold, cruel steel of battle was the stylus. And 
what epic poems they are! I see Corse on Kenesaw 
Mountain writing one as he signals Sherman: "I am short 



368 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

a cheek bone and one ear, but I can whip all hell yet." 
I see Pickett's brigade at Gettysburg write one, as with 
terrible precision they sweep across the valley in that 
sultry July day, only to be cut down as hay is mown in 
the field. I see the soldiers on the banks of the Rapidan 
write one, as they creep through the tangled underbrush 
to certain death in the early morning, and, waiting for 
the battle to begin, pin bits of paper on their blouses 
with their names written thereon. I see the beaten but 
defiant "Johnnies" at Franklin write one, as, being called 
upon to surrender, they shout back, "There are enough left 
for another killing." I see the army of the Cumberland 
write one, as in the late afternoon it sweeps up Missionary 
Ridge Hke the rolling billows of the in-coming tide, and 
dashes itself over the mountain top Hke the foam of the 
billows tossed above the rocks on the shore. Yes, great, 
noble epic poems, that will never die while the flag floats. 
But there is another thought. Why these deeds of 
daring ? Why did the war, with its awful sacrifice, con- 
tinue through four long years and end only at Appomat- 
tox ? Some answer must be given big enough to match 
the bigness of the question. Perhaps the answer is that 
God had a sublime and terrible epic poem that He would 
write. It may be that the battle-fields are the letters 
that spell out His poem. It is possible that the sun 
shines in the heavens in the daytime, and the stars twinkle 
in the sky in the night time, to throw a light upon this 
fair land of ours that all may read the poem. It is not 
difiicult to believe that God has spoken in Lincoln and 
Grant and Lee and Sherman and Johnston and Thomas, 
and the brave men that followed them, and that through 
them he has said: "Righteousness exalteth a nation," 



SAMUEL C. MITCHELL 369 

"Truth is the strength of a people," "Freedom is the 
priceless heritage of every man," "Love is the mightiest 
power of civilization." These men who bore the brunt 
of battle thought so. We of this generation and of 
generations yet unborn must think so. 



APPOMATTOX AND THE AGE 

SAMUEL C. MITCHELL 

President of the University of South Carolina 

(Condensed from an address delivered at Richmond College, 
Virginia, April 9, igo6.) 

This ninth day of April is the anniversary of Appomat- 
tox, and the mind naturally dwells upon the meaning of 
that event. How shall we account for the disaster which 
there overtook us? A review of the times and tenden- 
cies of that day may throw some light upon the circum- 
stances that led up to our calamity. 

In the Atlantic Ocean there is only one gulf current, 
but in the nineteenth century there were three gulf 
currents. These three streams of tendency are as trace- 
able, as measurable, and as potent in their influence as 
that resistless river in the sea. These three tendencies 
in the nineteenth century were: (i) a liberal tendency; 
(2) a national tendency, and (3) an industrial tendency. 

Circumstances — cruel circumstances that bring tears 
at the thought — had shut the South out of a share in 
these three mighty influences of that century. Destiny 
seemed to have arrayed her against them, in spite of the 



370 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

fact that in the closing quarter of the eighteenth century 
Virginia's own sons were pioneers in the advocacy of 
national and liberal measures. Such is the pathos and 
irony of the civil tragedy. Madison, as the father of 
the Constitution; Washington, putting his strong stamp 
upon the Federal executive; Marshall, giving force to 
the Federal judiciary; and Jefferson, drafting the Ordi- 
nance of 1787, excluding slavery from the Northwest 
Territory — these men and measures appeared prophetic 
of a destiny for the South the reverse of what ensued. 
The shift in the scene was made by Eli Whitney in his 
invention, in 1793, of the cotton-gin, which rendered 
slavery profitable in the raising of cotton, a product so 
well suited to the climate and soil of the South. 

As a result, the South found itself at variance with the 
rapid changes which had swept over the world during 
the first half of the nineteenth century. The South was 
led by this train of circumstances: (i) to hold on to 
slavery in opposition to the liberal tendency of the age; 
(2) to insist upon state rights in opposition to nation- 
^-lity; (3) to content herself with agriculture alone, instead 
of embracing the rising industrialism. 

It was an instance of arrested development. The facts 
do not permit us to escape this conclusion, notwithstand- 
ing that there was so much of nobility, chivalry, and 
beautiful life in the old South to love and admire. It was 
these historic forces — the liberal, national, and indus- 
trial — that won at Appomattox over the South, in spite 
of the genius of Lee, the heroism of her sons, and the 
sacrifices of her daughters. 

If this be the interpretation of the confused forces in 
that time that tried men's souls, then certain duties 



HENRY LOUIS SMITH 371 

become clear as to the South of our day. These are: 
(i) to Hberalize it in thought; (2) to nationalize it in 
politics; and (3) to industrialize it in production. Grati- 
fyingly are these new forces at work, forces which are 
to recreate the commonwealths of the South in all that 
makes for progress and power. Education is a present 
ferment; industrialism, especially in cotton and iron mills, 
is making vast strides; the Panama canal will put us on 
the pathway of the world. May we not look forward 
to the time when the resources of our mines, forests, and 
pastures will be turned by the skill of the artisan into 
finished products bringing to us untold riches? Would 
we make cotton king ? Let us aspire to spin every fiber 
of our exhaustless fields. By such alignments with this 
wondrous mother-age we shall enable the South to take 
her rightful part in determining the national destiny. 



OLD IDEALS AND THE OLD SOUTH 

HENRY LOUIS SMITH 
President of Davidson College 

(Extract from an address delivered before the University Col- 
lege of Medicine, Richmond, Virginia, May 12, 1904.) 

I WISH to reaffirm what the old South believed in the 
time of her greatest glory, and what the shades of her 
mighty dead still teach from storied urn and monumental 
granite — that the foundation of all true greatness, 
whether of an individual or a nation, is morale not material. 
Our possessions, our houses and lands, our railroads and 



372 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

factories, our cannon and battle-ships are but dirt — 
among them national character rises like a marble shaft 
amid piles of rubbish. The question of deepest moment 
is not what we have, but what we are. National wealth 
may come and go, national power may wax and wane; 
the passing centuries are changing national customs in 
dress, manners, architecture, and modes of government 
— but the great moral judgments of the world, moral 
standards, moral laws, moral ideals — these stand un- 
changed from age to age. They are like some granite 
cliff overlooking a stormy sea. At its base the tide ebbs 
and flows, the sea ripples in music or roars in anger; its 
summit is covered alternately with summer's flowers or 
winter's snow, against its rocky face the sun shines and 
the tempests beat — yet earthquake and storm but 
settle it more firmly on its eternal base, and when each 
short-lived tumult has subsided, it still looks out un- 
changed over land and sea. No transient splendor of 
accumulated wealth can make a nation truly rich or 
truly great. Its invisible assets must be counted up — 
civic honor and purity, height of national ideals, capacity 
for heroism and self-sacrifice, commercial honesty and 
domestic virtue, diffused moral culture, treasures of man- 
hood and womanhood — these cannot be measured by 
long Usts of industrial enterprises, by so many dollars 
per capita of manufactured products, nor even by per- 
centages of literacy and illiteracy. 

Prosperity is a severer test of a people's true character 
than adversity. Will the new South stand the tropic 
sunshine as their fathers did the storm? Vegetables, we 
know, grow best in sunshine and balmy air; the finer 
growths of manhood, alas, are often blighted by the 



WOODROW WILSON 373 

sun and wither away under a cloudless sky. If the old 
spiritual and moral ideals of our people are to be replaced 
by cold, shrewd, tireless, triumphant commerciaHsm; if 
liberal culture, ethical standards, and true moral great- 
ness are to be sacrificed on the altar of mammon; if grow- 
ing wealth and luxury are to culminate in gross material- 
ism, then God pity the land of Washington and Jefferson, 
of Lee and Jackson. In that case, though our air is 
vibrant with humming spindles, and our land gridironed 
with busy railroads, and every hill crowned with the 
palace of a millionaire, yet the true glory of the South 
will be in her glorious past. 



THE CONTACT OF MINDS 

WOODROW WILSON 

President of Princeton University 

(From a speech delivered at a banquet following the inaugura- 
tion of Ernest F. Nichols as President of Dartmouth College, October 
14, 1909.) 

The only lasting stuff for friendship is community of 
conviction; the only lasting basis is that moral basis in 
which all true intellectual life has its rootage and sus- 
tenance, and those are the rootages of character, not the 
rootages of knowledge. Knowledge is merely, in its uses, 
the evidence of character, it does not produce character. 
Some of the most learned of men have been among the 
meanest of men, and some of the noblest of men have 
been illiterate, but have nevertheless shown their nobiUty 
by using such powers as they had for high purposes. 



374 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

We never shall succeed in creating this organic passion, 
this great use of the mind, which is fundamental, until 
we have made real communities of our colleges and have 
utterly destroyed the practise of a merely formal con- 
tact, however intimate, between the teacher and the 
pupil. Until we live together in a common community 
and expose each other to the general infection, there will 
be no infection. You cannot make learned men of 
undergraduates by associating them intimately with 
each other, because they are too yoimg to be learned 
men yet themselves; but you can create the infection of 
learning by associating undergraduates with men who 
are learned. 

How much do you know of the character of the average 
college professor whom you have heard lecture ? Of some 
professors, if you had known more you would have beheved 
less of what they said; of some professors, if you had 
known more you would have beheved more of what they 
said. One of the dryest lecturers on American history 
I ever heard in my Hfe was also a man more learned than 
any other man I ever knew in American history, and out 
of the class room, in conversation, one of the juiciest, 
most delightful, most informing, most stimulating men I 
ever had the pleasure of associating with. The man in 
the class room was useless, out of the class room he fer- 
tiHzed every mind that he touched. And most of us are 
really found out in the informal contacts of life. If you 
want to know what I know about a subject, don't set 
me up to make a speech about it, because I have the 
floor and you cannot interrupt me, and I can leave out 
the things I want to leave out and bring in the things I 
want to bring in. If you really want to know what I 



BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 375 

know, sit down and ask me questions, interrupt me, 
contradict me, and see how I hold my ground. If that 
method were followed, the undergraduate might make a 
consoling discovery of how ignorant his professor was, 
as well as many a stimulating discovery of how well 
informed he was. 

I suppose a great many dull men must try to teach, 
and if dull men have to teach, they have to teach by 
method that dull men can follow. But they never teach 
anybody anything. It is merely that the imiversity, in 
order to have a large corps, must go through the motions; 
but the real vital processes are in spots, in such circum- 
stances, and only in spots, and you must hope that the 
spots will spread. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PETTY POLITICS 

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 

President of the University of California 

(Extract from an address delivered upon the occasion of the 
inauguration of David F. Houston as President of the University 
of Texas, at Austin, Texas, April 19, 1906.) 

Unless the university in all its working and being can 
rise, like a lighthouse, high and clean above the surging 
and dashing of the transient and the sordid, unless it 
can lay hold with its foundations upon something more 
solid than the shifting sands of opinion and prejudice, 
unless it can look down calm and undismayed in its 
anchorage of truth upon the battling waves around it. 



376 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

conscious that their fury cannot reach it, there might 
as well be no university. Its light will be no good. It 
will fail when needed most. It will deceive those who 
trust it. 

I am warning here not alone about the common brew 
of party poHtics, but about the meaner brew that is 
stirred in the name of private pull: the influential citizen 
who wants his wife's cousin appointed to an instructor- 
ship; the editor who wages a grudge because a friend who 
was an incompetent instructor lost his place; the assembly- 
man whose brother's boy must not be expelled lest 
appropriations in the next legislature suffer; the pro- 
fessor whose salary had better be raised because it will 
be acceptable to certain important people with whom 
he goes camping in summer; the janitor who, though 
he toils not neither does he spin, is girt with the breast- 
plate of membership in some order that must not be 
offended, or has rendered service in the primaries; the 
builder and contractor who skimps the mortar of cement, 
but is related to a prominent poHtician; the man who has 
always been a warm supporter of the university, and has 
shown this by sending three of his children to enjoy 
its free education, and who now feels that the professor 
of chemistry ought to find the right ingredients in the 
oil from his well; the man who wants a position to teach 
French, and, though he cannot speak French himself, 
belongs to an influential family and had an imcle who 
once played the French horn. All this business is full 
of backhanded blackmail and backhanded steahng, but 
is tolerated and often promoted by otherwise well-inten- 
tioned citizens of sluggish public conscience, who dazedly 
conform to the vulgate notion that some way or other 



WILLIAM F. WEBSTER 377 

public money cannot be expected to have as much value 
as other money. A pubHc official, whether president 
or regent of the university, or member of a school 
board, or mayor of a city, or governor of a state, or keeper 
of the dog pound, who uses his position to secure pubhc 
office and pay for a man inferior to the available best, 
because of personal and private relations or obHgations 
to that man, has used pubhc money wherewith to settle 
private accounts; he has treated a pubhc trust as a private 
possession; he has stolen pubhc money; he is a thief. 
The man who urges an official to do such a thing has 
incited to theft, and is partaker in the crime. If there 
is any doubt about it, wherein does the doubt He ? 



OUR COUNTRY'S NEED OF EDUCATED MEN 

WILLL4M F. T\^BSTER 
Principal of the East High ScJwol of Minneapolis 

(Extract from an address before the Minnesota Educational 
Association, 1909.) 

What a need there is for educated men! Keeping 
abreast of the times, we are all fast learning that true 
greatness is measured by large service. And the men 
that look beyond their dinners and their playthings and 
hear the harsh creaking of the great industrial machine, 
the men that are conducting the large enterprises for 
the amehoration of the hard conditions of hfe are clear- 
visioned, warm-hearted men of education. The men that 
have made two blades of wheat to grow where before 



378 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

there was but one, and so have increased the value of 
farm products in our state tens of milUons each year; 
the men that have gathered the snows from the moun- 
tains, and from them sent sparkhng water coursing through 
the deserts of the West until now they breathe sweet 
incense and bring forth rich fruits in their season; the 
men that in fancy saw in the filthy purheus of Mulberry 
Bend a beautiful opening where httle children could 
drink in hfe and joy, and look up into the deep, blue 
sky, and behold the big, bright sun; that have set in the 
midst of naked poverty, starvhig want, and ignorant 
immorality, sweet homes of refuge, to which the children 
of crime and despair may flee, and from which sweetness 
and light radiate to the darkest alleys of the human 
heart; the men that are working for an international 
peace, for the day when the horrid demons of war 
shall be slain, and the labor of man shall be for the 
''healing of the nations"; in every department of 
the world's work, the men that are doing the things 
worth while are educated men. It was the universities 
that were the foimtain which poured the flood that over- 
whelmed the Czar, and wrested from that autocrat a 
partial recognition of the rights of a great people; and 
in Turkey to-day the men that so wisely have managed 
a difficult situation and have rid that nation of the cen- 
tury's foulest blot are educated men. In the last cen- 
tury, who were the great statesmen that shaped the 
politics of the world? "Cavour, whose monument is 
united Italy, — one from the Alps to Tarentum, from 
the lagoons of Venice to the Gulf of Salerno; Bismarck, 
the iron chancellor, who raised the German empire from 
a name to a fact; Gladstone, but yesterday the incarnate 



WILLIAM F. WEBSTER 379 

heart and conscience of England"; Everett, Simmer, and 
Phillips — those giants of oratory, hurhng winged words 
of truth, tipped with fire from Liberty's altar, which 
roused the sleeping eyes of a nation to behold the awful 
crime of slavery: all, all scholars. When the scholar 
lifts his wand, the Titans of modern industry, Steam and 
Electricity, throw his shuttles, forge his steel, lift and 
carry, and run his errands. At his bidding, springing 
arches leap the mountain torrent; the filmy tissues of 
fancy grow into palaces more wonderful than Caesar's 
golden house that crowned the Palatine. Penniless him- 
self, the scholar cries, "Open, sesame," and the dark 
caves of ghttering treasure fly open, while the grim guard- 
ians stand back and bid him take and use. He is prophet 
and seer; in the darkest hour of the night, he catches 
the first dim streaks of the purphng dawn. He beholds 
the new day when there shall be no more pain and sorrow, 
when the nations of the earth shall dwell together in 
peace, when every man shaU receive the full reward of 
his labor, and each shall lift up his heart to God, his 
Father, and reach out his hand to man, his brother. In 
every age, the new heaven and the new earth have been 
seen first by the prophetic eye of the scholar. 



380 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 



THREE TESTS OF EDUCATION 

E. ERLE SPARKS 
President of Pennsylvania State College 

(Condensed from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, 
July I, 1909.) 

The three great tests of effective education are service, 
usefulness, and obedience. 

The word "servant," along with the words "man" 
and "woman," has almost disappeared from our American 
vocabulary. As we are all "ladies" and "gents" now, 
so we are employees, not servants. Young men will sit 
pale and hollow-chested at a desk rather than work on a 
farm because they do not propose to be anybody's ser- 
vant; and young women will work as clerks rather than 
enter clean, bright, wholesome kitchens as "servants"; 
and young high school graduates nowadays are wiUing 
to begin at the top. Young men are not willing to serve 
their time, nor their apprenticeship. Horace Greeley 
served an apprenticeship of six years at forty dollars a 
year, and then, when being asked the best way to make 
an editor out of a boy, repHed, "You must feed him on 
printer's ink." 

The second test of education is usefulness. A young 
man should be worth something when he has gotten 
through school. As an example to be avoided, take the 
son of the farmer who, being asked, "Did your boy take 
French?" repHed, "No, he says he never took it, though 
he was exposed to it." Another man sent his son to 



E. ERLE SPARKS 381 

college becaase he did not want him to have to work as 
hard as he had had to work. But he should work all the 
harder. Toil laid the foundation of xVmerican character. 
WTien Abraham Lincoln's mother died there was not a 
physician within thirty-five miles, and when Abraham 
went to bed he crawled up into a garret and slept on the 
hay and fodder. Toil must be taught in the home and 
in the school. The editor of the Ladies^ Home Journal 
or some other ladylike man may write an editorial telling 
you that you are working the pupils too hard, but for 
every boy who has broken down from overstudy there 
are half a dozen who have broken down from "over 
tobacco." And for every girl who has broken down 
through overstudy there are a half dozen who have 
broken down through over society, overdress, and late 
hours — trying to be women before they are through 
being girls. 

The third test, obedience, is another xmpopular test. 
However, the most dangerous spot in American life to-day 
is the lack of respect for authority. Roosevelt spent 
seven years trjdng to make the people in high plac^ 
obey the law, and he contended that what we need is 
not more laws, but the better enforcement of the laws 
which we have. 

Obedience and respect for authority must be taught 
in the home to become a habiL This is illustrated by 
the story of the two football captains of the Harvard and 
West Point teams who, being asked by the official at the 
beginning of a game, "Are you ready?" the one replied, 
"Let her go," and the second, "We are ready, sir"; and 
also by the story of BUI Anthony, who reported to Cap- 
tain Sigsbee of the Maine ^ "T have to report, sir, that 



382 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the vessel is blown up and is sinking." Obedience can 
never be taught at school unless it has been first taught 
at home. 



EDUCATION AND SERVICE 

JAMES H. BAKER 
President of the University of Colorado 

(Extract from the baccalaureate address at the University of 
Colorado June, 1908.) 

You remember the vision of Ibsen's John Gabriel 
Borkman as he stands in a winter midnight on an open 
plateau in the firwood under the shadow of the mountain 
and facing the fiord and distant range, and recalls lov- 
ingly the early ambitions of a now broken life. Using 
in part the poet's phrases: He sees the smoke of great 
steamships on the fiord that weave a network of fellow- 
ship all round the world; he hears the hum of factories 
with wheels whirling and bands flashing day and night; 
he sees in the mountain ranges the buried millions, the 
veins of metal stretching out their winding, branching, 
luring arms to him begging to be liberated, to be free, 
unborn treasures yearning for the light; and all these 
seem a shining train of power and glory, all his kingdom 
to be conquered. Ibsen's hero made a false god of liis 
ambition and a metal hand finally gripped him by the 
heart. But the picture may represent worthy visions 
of men who, in an age when the sword has been beaten 
into marvelous implements of industry, execute enter- 
prises that would challenge the organizing power of a 
CiEsar or Napoleon — men who have not felt the chill 



JAMES H. BAKER 383 

blast, whose hearts have not been clutched by the ice- 
hand. Goethe's Fausl has the vision of power over 
nature's forces: 

"This world means something to the capable, 
Make grandly visible my daring plan!" 

But it is by the light of an inner revelation that he sees 
his work should help men, and, when the pur[>ose to 
leave a permanent blessing to his fellows arises, the 
supreme moment of happiness which he would fain pro- 
long has come, the happiness which he has so long and 
deviously pursued. The German education everywhere 
looks toward service to state and society, and this is 
properly one of its chief functions; our education must 
train men to meet the increasing extent, complexness, 
and refinements of modern activities. To-day religion 
and ethics and poetry and philosophy and science and 
all knowledge must be reaUzed in practical life. The 
philosophy is not, "Hitch your wagon to a star," but Hitch 
your star to a wagon. From bricklaying to lawmaking 
too many are unskilled, and, what is worse, they don't 
care; and the schools have to weigh this fact. Huxley's 
enormous longing for the highest and best in all shapes 
should reach every practical occupation as well as the 
world of so-called culture interests. Moreover, the idea 
of ser\ace must be infused into labor and enterprise. 
We rail not at commerce, but at the commercial spirit. 
If formal education cannot give special skill, it should at 
least develop will and pride in accomplishment and 
above all the ideals that make men responsible and 
mutually helpful. In the long eight years of high school 
and college some part may well be reorganized to lead 



384 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

to more definite ends or at least to give the power and 
desire to do thoroughly and well a part of the world's 
work. Training should end in concentration, not diffu- 
sion, and should bear flower and fruit. 



EDUCATION AND RESPONSIBILITY 

HARRY NOBLE WILSON 

Pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church of St. Paid, Minnesota 

(Extract from a commencement address at the University of 
Colorado June, 1908.) 

In the magnificent Capitol building of the state of 
Minnesota, as one enters the Senate Chamber he sees 
in letters of gold, which extend around the great room, 
these pregnant words of Daniel Webster, "Let us develop 
the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up 
its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see 
whether we also in our day and generation may not 
perform something worthy to be remembered." To have 
this sense of obligation, to understand its nature, to have 
the glorious consciousness of the weight of responsibility 
upon our shoulders, to achieve things that really are 
worth while, this transforms fife and ennobles it. 

Poorly have the educated caught the meaning of their 
years of special training, if they cannot fully agree with 
Hurlburt that the distinctive idea of education is, not 
to increase what one knows, but to augment what one 
is. It is the true glory of living to realize that we are 
not merely cogs in a great machine, drops in an infinite 



HARRY NOBLE WILSON 385 

ocean, but that each one of us is a living, sentient, think- 
ing, loving human being. For right equipment for 
highest service, the need is to reahze just that: to gain a 
clear, plain, and definite conviction of one's personality, 
of one's own selfhood; to be able to say, ''Here I am, 
created by God for a definite purpose; set down amid a 
billion and a half of other men and women, exactly like 
none other of all the fifteen hundred millions swarming 
upon the globe to-day, therefore will I have the self- 
respect that is the corner-stone of all virtues, therefore 
will I make the best possible use of the peculiar faculties 
which are mine, therefore will I develop my capabilities 
and all the faculties of mind and body to the utmost, 
therefore will I consecrate them all to the service of 
humanity." 

Mrs. Humphry Ward makes one of her characters go 
out into the night and look up at the stars and wonder 
whether he, only one among millions on earth, and earth 
but one of countless worlds, can be the object of any 
special thought and care on the part of God. Then he 
remembers that he himself is greater than the world he 
stands upon, greater than the gleaming stars, because 
stars and worlds are unthinking masses of matter at the 
best, and he can think. 

Wise old Seneca said, "When thou hast profited so 
much that thou respectest thyself, thou mayest let go 
thy tutor." It is this equipment that enables the man 
who has seen the basis and nature of his responsibility 
to rise in some degree to the repayment of all the toil 
and thought and suffering and prayer the race has 
expended upon his upbringing. 

A sculptor once asked Michael Angelo to come and see 



386 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

his statue of St. George intended for a church in Florence. 
In admiration and surprise the great master gazed at the 
marble form. Every Umb was perfect, every Hne true, 
the face was Hghted with thought, determination, and 
courage. The brow was upHfted, the foot forward as if 
it would step into life. Anxiously the sculptor waited 
for the verdict of the great critic. Looking earnestly 
upon the statue, Angelo lifted his hand and said, "Now 
march!" It was grander than ai^y encomium he could 
speak. 

God has given you great abihties. He has given 
you powers for use and service untold. He has placed 
you amid wonderful surroundings. He sends you out 
into touch with the needy, helpless world. And as I 
stand facing you this morning, realizing that, I say with 
Angelo, ' ' Now march ! ' * 



AMERICAN AND EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION 

GEORGE EDWIN MACLEAN 
President of the State University of Iowa 

(Extract from a commencement address delivered at Syracuse 
University Jime, 1909.) 

American is a word that thrills us, and harnessed to 
expansion, it stirs us as the word empire stirs a Briton, 
of which Rosebery says: "It represents to us our history, 
our tradition, our race. It is a matter of peace, of com- 
merce, of civihzation, above all, a question of faith." 
The use of the term makes it necessary for us to guard 



GEORGE EDWIN MacLEAN 387 

against bombast, braggadocio, and chauvinism. We smile 
complacently at the spirit and mixed metaphor of the 
undergraduate in the Oxford Union who declared in the 
heat of the debate that the British lion, whether he 
roamed in the jungles of India, or climbed the pines in 
Canada, never retreated into his shell or drew in his 
horns! We Americans are prone to forget that spread- 
eagleism is still our besetting sin, less modified in behavior 
than in speech. 

The plain meaning of American needs to be taught to 
many of us. American stands for something more than 
territory, descent, society, wealth, and accompHshments. 
It represents a spirit; to the old world it means the new, 
and as their remarks upon our institutions and their read- 
ings in our literature show, it is too often merely the 
novel. American signifies the fresh, but not necessarily 
the freaky. Let us try to define. American means the 
best for all and all for the best. That is, equal oppor- 
tunity for all and all inspired with ideals for the best. 
The birthright of humanity is opportunity and the pos- 
sible attainment of the best. In the breadth of our 
common democracy, with full recognition of the varying 
powers of persons, there will be an elevating aristocracy, 
the aristocracy of service, and where touched by Chris- 
tianity, of sacrifice. Rising from the cross, the American 
eagle may have healing in his wings for the nations. 
For real expansion means to open out, to unfold. It is a 
growth from within, and while it may appropriate what 
is beyond, it is only to assimilate and elevate. Like all 
movements of note, it is mighty and beyond man. 

The responsibilities of American expansion are stupen- 
dous. Our safeguard is to be found in part in educational 



388 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

expansion which has gone hand in hand with American 
expansion. Rosebery has said, *'In the last resolve, the 
efficiency of a nation rests in its education." The highest 
promise and the fullest potency of educational efficiency 
and unity are in the recognition of the personal and the 
ethical in education. Church, state, and private insti- 
tutions, with antagonisms disappearing, are swinging 
into their orbits in a national galaxy about the full orbed 
character — education. In this day of our entrance as 
a world power in a twentieth-century ethical era, educa- 
tional efficiency and expansion must be our saving salt 
at home and abroad. 

May it not be permitted to the American educator as 
patriot, in view of the potency of American and educa- 
tional expansion, to sing James Whitcomb Riley's song, 
the "Messiah of Nations": 

"High o'erlooking sea and land, 

America! 
Trustfully with outheld hand, 

America! 
Thou dost welcome all in quest 
Of thy freedom, peace, and rest — 
Every exile is thy guest — 

America! America! 

"Thine a universal love, 

America! 
Thine the cross and crown thereof, 

America! 
Aid us, then, to sing thy worth; 
God hath builded from thy birth, 
The first Nation of the Earth — 

America! America!" 



JULIUS KAHN 389 

THE MUCK-RAKER 

JULIUS KAHN 
Congressman from California 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives 
March 26, 19 10.) 

On the 14th of April, 1906, upon the occasion of the 
laying of the corner-stone of the new office building of 
the House of Representatives, President Roosevelt said: 

In "Pilgrim's Progress" the man with the muck-rake is set forth 
as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of 
on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who, in this life, 
consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty and fixes his eyes 
with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. 
. . . The Uar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity 
takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It 
puts a premium on knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, 
or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. 

In this connection I am reminded of an incident that 
occurred in the city of Sacramento, in 1895, during a 
session of the California legislature. Major Frank 
McLaughHn, a well-known citizen of our state, was at 
the capital attending to some matters pending before 
the legislature. One morning there appeared in one of 
the San Francisco newspapers an article which reflected 
somewhat upon the good name and character of an esti- 
mable citizen of Oakland, California, wherein it was 
charged that he was gathering a corruption fund in 
order that he might be able to go to the Capitol and 
defeat certain bills that were then being considered by 



390 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

the committees of the legislature. Indignant at the 
attack, this citizen wired to Major McLaughlin as follows: 

Brand the article in this morning's paper false as hell! Such 
tactics will act as a boomerang. I am coming up this evening. 

Whereupon Major McLaughlin promptly wired back: 

I have looked all over Sacramento, but I cannot find a "false 
as hell" branding iron. I would like to help you propel the boom- 
erang, but I do not know just in which direction to throw it. Keep 
frappe, old man! To-day's newspapers are lost in starting to-mor- 
row's fires. 

"You may fool all of the people some of the time; you may fool 
some of the people all of the time; but you cannot fool all of the 
people all of the time.'* 

The immortal Lincoln! What a world of emotion that 
name conjures up! No wonder all of his biographers 
speak of the sad expression of his countenance. Was 
ever mortal man so vilified, so abused, so traduced, so 
defamed as he was in his lifetime? He was ridiculed, 
reviled, and lampooned as no other man in our country's 
history. Gibes and jeers and sneers were his daily por- 
tion in the newspapers of this country, and even in some 
that were pubHshed abroad, during the whole Civil War. 
"The baboon at the other end of the avenue" and "That 
damned idiot in the White House " were some of the 
expletives applied to him by the muck-rakers of his day. 

Mr. Lincoln was so outraged by the obloquies, so 
stung by the disparagements, his existence was rendered 
so unhappy, that his life became almost a burden to 
him. Lamon, his lifelong friend, says that one day he 
went to the President's office and found him lying on 
the sofa, greatly distressed. Jumping to his feet, he 
said: 



JULIUS KAHN 391 

You know, Lamon, better than any living man that from boy- 
hood up my ambition was to be President; but look at me. I wish 
I had never been bom! I had rather be dead than as President 
be thus abused in the house of my friends. 

One delegate at Chicago declared that for less offenses 
than Mr. Lincoln had been guilty of the English people 
had chopped off the head of the first Charles. Another 
arose and asserted that 

Ever since that usurper, traitor, and tyrant has occupied the 
presidential chair the party has shouted, "War to the knife, and 
the knife to the hilt!" Blood has flowed in torrents, and yet the 
thirst of the old monster is not quenched. His cry is for more blood. 

But why continue the recital of the calumnies, the 
insinuations, the half-truths, and the downright Hes that 
were printed in abuse of the Great Emancipator? The 
muck-rakers who made his life miserable are nearly all 
rotting in forgotten graves. But the name of Lincoln 
will shine resplendent through all the ages. As long as 
the universe shall endure he will tower, giant-like, above 
the mere pygmies that hurled their scurriUty at him, 
and the story of his life will prove an inspiration to mil- 
lions of Americans in the generations yet to come. 

Mr. Chairman, I could speak at great length of the 
abusive attacks that have appeared in the newspapers 
and the magazines of this country against Grant, and 
Garfield, and Cleveland, and McKinley, aye, and against 
Theodore Roosevelt. They had their detractors, their 
defamers. But their fame rests secure in the hearts of 
their countrymen. And while they all undoubtedly felt 
the injustice of the poignant shafts of abuse that were 
hurled against them by the muck-rakers of their respective 
periods, who to-day cares or even half-way remembers 



392 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

what was the nature or the character of the maUcious 
onslaughts? 

And so, my colleagues, we, too, can draw this moral 
from the lessons taught us by that fact: *' To-day's news- 
papers are lost in starting to-morrow's fires." 



PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICANISM 

MILES POINDEXTER 
Congressman from the State of Washington 

(Condensed from a speech delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives June, 1909.) 

Progressive Republicanism stands for the conserva- 
tion of the natural resources of the Federal domain as 
opposed to the stand-pat poUcy of parceling out to 
private interests, without restriction and without ade- 
quate compensation, these vast possessions of the people. 
It favors the extension of the forest reserve system into 
the mountain regions of the East. It stands for strong 
and effective Government control of railroads, and the 
regulation of rates thereon, as opposed to the reactionary 
pohcy of non-interference. It stands for competition in 
trade as against the machine policy of monopoly. 

We are in favor of the sane and wholesome policy, so 
successfully inaugurated by ex-President Roosevelt, of 
dealing with wealthy criminals the same as with poor 
ones; and that land frauds, rebates, conspiracies to 
defraud the customs should be vigorously prosecuted, 
and that the principals, as well as the tools and dummies, 
should be punished, regardless of great wealth or station. 



MILES POINDEXTER 393 

Progressive Republicanism favors a liberal and business- 
like policy of internal waterway improvement. It advo- 
cates a permanent tariff commission, with full power to 
investigate and report all facts necessary to an enlight- 
ened tariff schedule, rather than the grab and barter 
system of Aldrich and Cannon. 

We advocate a reorganization of the United States 
Senate so that the interests and the sections which have 
so long entirely controlled it shall share their influence 
with the entire country. We are for a more independent 
spirit in the Senate, in the place of a spirit of subser- 
viency to one or two dictators. 

Progressive Republicanism, especially, stands for a 
reorganization of the House of Representatives, so that 
that branch of Congress, at least, shall be, as it was 
intended to be, responsive to public opinion. As it is 
controlled to-day by the patronage and power of the 
Speaker, it is wholly unrepresentative. 

Progressive RepubHcans contend and know that the 
main purpose of government is the protection of the 
weak against the strong, and that, while all interests 
should be treated with justice, the central principle of 
all legislation should be the public good and not private 
aggrandizement. 

We have come to a point when the doctrine of Hberty 
has been construed as license not more by some of the 
lowest elements of society than by some of the so-called 
highest. We have come to a point when some private 
interests vested with Government franchises have become 
more of a menace to individual rights than the Govern- 
ment ever was, and the peculiar spectacle is witnessed 
of a people, jealous of its liberty, seeking to enlarge the 



394 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

powers of the central government as a matter of self- 
protection. It is the only recourse, and unless that 
Government in all its branches is kept perfectly free 
from the control of the great powers which it is sought 
to regulate and restrain, there is no redress at all. 



AMERICAN CITY GOVERNMENT 

BRAND WHTTLOCK 
Mayor of Toledo, Ohio 

(Extract from an address before the Chautauqua Assembly, 

New York, July 27, 1909.) 

The American city is completely under the yoke of a 
powerful trio of despots: the rural legislator, the poHtical 
machine, and the public-utility corporation. 

The country man, who dominates most of our legis- 
latures, is incompetent to legislate for the city because 
he is ignorant of the conditions for which he is making 
laws. Many of the men passing laws regarding street- 
cars in our legislatures would be scared to death if they 
tried to get on one. As a result of this ignorance the 
country man distrusts the city. There is a feeling, as old 
as history, that for some reason the city man is less moral, 
less able to know what is good for him than the country 
man. As a result there has been a great mass of sump- 
tuary legislation in our state legislatures. The laws 
applying to cities have been confined to legislation intended 
to make the city good without thought of the differences 
in the habits and modes of occupation which are inevi- 
table. They have passed laws governing the personal 



BRAND WHITLOCK 395 

conduct of the residents in the city, and have entirely 
ignored the real problems which confront it. 

The notorious misgovernment of American cities is 
brought about, in large measure, by the politicians. But 
there is no use in blaming the poHtical boss. We made 
him. He is a product of yours and mine. If we are to 
eHminate him we must separate along local lines and 
not along the imaginary national Hues which now separate 
the parties. The parties are supposed to represent prin- 
ciples. I am not certain just what these principles are, 
and I don't think anyone else is. We vote for them 
because our grandfather voted for them. Grandfather is 
the most influential man dead, and he is a great deal 
more influential dead than he was alive. It is this auto- 
matic partisan, on whom the boss can count to appear 
on election day and vote straight, that makes the lot 
of the boss so easy. 

Every trail of graft in our cities leads straight to the 
door of some pubUc-utiUty corporation. For all the 
graft, corruption, and shame in our American cities 
the money has come from their coffers. Some men are 
awfully cheap and will sell themselves for an invitation 
to dinner, or some social distinction. As to the other 
forms of graft that now exist in the cities, it is from the 
pubUc utilities that they learn it. When the councilmen 
have sold out the city's rights to the pubhc-service cor- 
porations, then it is easy for them to sell other things. 
The pubHc-utility interests, the street-car companies, 
the gas companies, and the rest have left a long trail of 
money-bribed councilmen, of blasted Hves of shame and 
ruin in their wake in every city of our land. The city 
must have power to deal adequately with the public- 



396 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

utility corporations. It should be allowed to pass on 
the laws which affect it by means of the referendum. It 
should be permitted to frame its own charter. 

What the American city must develop before it really 
becomes a city is a city sense, a sense of common respon- 
sibihty and a method by which the common will may 
express itself. 



TRIBUTE TO GENERAL LEW WALLACE 

HENRY A. BARNHART 
Congressman from Indiana 

(Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives 
February 26, 19 10, upon the occasion of the inauguration, by the 
state of Indiana, of a statue of General Lew Wallace in Statuary 
Hall.) 

Mr. Speaker: It is a glorious privilege and a distin- 
guished honor to stand in this Capitol, a representative 
of the people of this great nation, and assist in the formal 
acceptance by our country of the statue donated by my 
home state of Indiana to perpetuate the conspicuous 
individuality of one of her most illustrious sons in the 
world-renowned Hall of Fame. 

To those of us, his neighbors, who knew General Lew 
Wallace, and who have watched with unspeakable pride 
the growth of his fame to world-wide grandeur, this 
memorial in perishable marble seems commonplace, for 
we know that the name of this celebrated soldier, dip- 
lomat, and author is written on the hearts of his country- 
men, never to be effaced. And while it is said of him 



HENRY A. BARNHART 397 

that he was great in war and profound in statecraft, the 
world would have had but passive paeans of praise for 
him except for the beacon light he gave to mankind in 
his story of the Christ. Of all his literary work, in "Ben- 
Hur" he reached the zenith of his fame, the triumph of 
his genius. 

Upon the windows of a publishing house in one of our 
great American cities the passer-by may read the words: 
"Books are the only things that live forever." That is 
a noble sentiment though but a partial truth. Books 
do live forever — that is, some books. And so do folks 
— that is, some folks. There is an earthly immortality. 
George EUot writes of 

"The choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence, 
In thoughts subHme that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues." 

Thought is immortal. It can no more be buried than 
it can be burned or hanged. What better fame, then, 
what more enduring monument can a man have than 
he has whose thoughts hve after him, whose words are 
lifted up like banners to call humanity to worthier living? 
There is also a reflected immortaHty for the man who 
makes it his ministry on earth to search out the best 
thoughts of others and give them to the race. 

And so "Ben-Hur" reflects the aggressive concept, 
the dramatic splendor, and the sacred trend of Lew 
Wallace's life standard. In this he gave color to his 
admiration for conquest in the *' chariot race"; to his 
dramatic art in the thrilHng triumph of the ''galley- 



39B AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

slave"; and to his religious fervor in the "Prayer of the 
Wandering Jew." 

Perhaps no writer of modern times gained so wide a 
reputation on so few books or began his Hterary career 
so late in life as did the author of " Ben-Hur." Moreover, 
no other writer so suddenly leaped into such fame as to 
at once class him among the typical novehsts of America. 
He fixed his high rank in the galaxy of world-famed 
authors at a single show of talent, and his name is written 
there for all time. 

And yet is it said of him that, like all of us, he was 
not satisfied with his achievements. But such is life — 
yearning, yearning, yearning! Wealth does not satisfy, 
fame does not satisfy, hterary attainment does not satisfy, 
travel does not satisfy, and home and family and friends 
do not satisfy. Nothing sufi&ces for the heart's longing 
except the consolation furnished by the world's master- 
piece of philosophy — the Book of Life, the inspiration 
of the ennobling narrative of "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the 
Christ." 

May the memory of Lew Wallace, Indiana's illustrious 
author, outlive this durable cast as love survives mor- 
tahty, and may the creative influence that gave the 
world such authorship and citizenship as his endure 
forever I 



ASBURY F. LEVER 399 



JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ASBURY F. LEVER 
Congressman from South Carolina 

(From a speech delivered in the House of Representatives March 
12, 1910, the occasion being the presentation, by the state of South 
Carohna, of a statue of John C. Calhoun, to be placed in Statuary 
HaU.) 

Calhoun, Webster, Clay, Benton: this roll call sounds 
the depth of the nation's intellectual pride. The legis- 
lative history of civiHzation fails to furnish a quartet 
comparable with this in the variety of its talents, the 
magnitude of its genius, the wisdom of its leadership, 
and the clearness of its prophecy. England's masterful 
triumvirate — Burke, Fox, Pitt — measured by the 
standard of comparative abilities and attainments, must 
give place to our more masterful four. 

Of this splendid galaxy, this inseparable quartet of 
political philosophers, none irradiated a more conspicuous 
and constant brilliancy than Mr. Calhoun. It is true he 
did not possess the enormous knowledge of Mr. Benton, 
nor the highly developed perception and penetration of 
Mr. Clay, nor the rich imagery and almost divine proph- 
ecy of Mr. Webster; but in the domain of speculative 
philosophy and metaphysics he was greater than all com- 
bined. He was not so practical as Mr. Benton, nor so 
dashing a parliamentary leader as Mr. Clay, nor so incom- 
parable an orator as Mr. Webster; but as a logician he 
is unrivaled among the sons of men. 

Mr. Calhoun was not a great orator. He was a great 



400 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

speaker and an unerring analyst. He addressed tJie 
intellect, not the emotion. The marked characteristic 
of his mind was its power of analysis, a faculty which, 
when fully developed, constitutes the highest order of 
human genius. It was this power of concentration, this 
ability to see beyond the intervening rubbish the one 
object for investigation, this almost superhuman direct- 
ness of perception, that was his greatest strength and yet 
his greatest weakness. Within the limits of his vision 
he was without a peer; but it is asserted that the safety 
of his leadership and the soundness of his theories were 
impaired by the narrowness of that vision. 

He saw the ship of state swinging down the encliffed 
channel of the future, saw it with a clearness approaching 
the supernatural; saw the placid waters upon which it 
floated; saw the hidden rocks, the dangerous shoals, the 
roaring cataract; saw them as no other man of his time 
saw them, and devoted his energies, his wonderful powers, 
his life itself, to giving her safe voyage. For him the 
Constitution had marked that channel, for him the Con- 
stitution was that ship's compass; beyond that he could 
not and did not see — the pilotage of none other would 
he trust. In his own language, "To restrict the powers 
of this Government within the rigid Umits prescribed 
by the Constitution," this was the chart of his interpre- 
tation, the embodiment of his attitude. By this he 
followed his course, formulated his policies, directed his 
activities, predicated his prophecies. All other consider- 
ations were subservient; to keep "within the rigid limits 
prescribed by the Constitution" was the supremest 
thought of his mind, the dearest object of his heart. 

A course moved by such ends necessarily brought male- 



ASBURY F. LEVER 401 

dictions upon him and necessitated that independence of 
party trammels which has made those who love a man 
admire him most. Others might compromise their con- 
victions for the commendation of the hour, others might 
swerve from the path of duty to avoid its dangers, others 
might flee from the wrath of pubhc opinion, others might 
be deaf to the pleadings of the seers, others might quail 
before the Hghtning flash of the hastening storm, others 
might temporize and hesitate, but not this man of rugged 
courage and iron independence. 

"He, like a solid rock by seas iaclosed, 
To raging winds and roaring waves exposed, 
From his proud summit looking down, disdains 
Their empty menace, and unmoved remains." 

Upon his monument, in historic St. PhilHp^s Church- 
yard, are engraven the words, ''Truth, Justice, and the 
Constitution." Fittingly they comprehend the ideals for 
which he wrought. In his toilsome pursuit of them he 
disdained the allurements of ambition, scorned the grovel- 
ing practises of smaUer men, endured without murmur 
the darts of misunderstanding, the shafts of misrepre- 
sentation, and the maUgnant arrows of fanatical hate. 
Unawed and unmoved by the fury of conflicting ideals, 
unterrified by the menace of lowering clouds, unseduced 
by the beckoning hand of preferment, he strode forward, 
sometimes the popular idol, sometimes alone, always self- 
reliant in the strength of his mighty gianthood — the 
defender of truth, the champion of justice, the protagonist 
of a strict and literal interpretation of the Constitution. 



402 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

SCIENTIFIC FARMING 

IRVING BACHELLER 
Author of "Eben H olden," etc. 

(Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the New Eng- 
land Society, New York city, December 22, 1909.) 

There are some who say that the "higher education" 
has gone too far, but I want to tell you that the Yankee 
is a far-seeing man. He has observed the hordes of 
human oxen pouring in from Europe, men who can sleep 
in a pig sty and dine on an onion and a chunk of bread, 
and he has been unwiUing to enter his sons in that sort 
of competition; and so he has sent them to college. Scien- 
tific farming has begun to pay. I know a farmer whose 
incomie would excite the envy of high finance. He said 
to me: "Don't be afraid of education; the land will soak 
up all we can get and yell for more." My friends, if I 
knew haK the secrets in ten acres of land I believe I 
could make my fortune off them in five years. We have 
sent the smart boys to the city, and we have kept the 
fools on the farm. We have put everything on the farm 
but brains. Anybody can learn Blacks tone and Green- 
leaf, but the book of law that is writ in the soil is only 
for keen eyes. We want our young men to know that 
it is more dignified to search for the secrets of God in 
the land than to grope for the secrets of Satan in a law- 
suit. One hundred thousand young men will be leaving 
college within a year from now. If the smartest of them 
would go to work on the land with gangs of these human 
oxen we could make the old earth lopsided with the 
fruitfulness of America. 



EDGAR Y. MULLINS 403 

Ladies and gentlemen, the ''hayseed" is no more. I 
propose the health of the coming farmer, who is to be a 
gentleman, a scholar, a laird, a baron. I propose the 
health of the many who have taught and shall teach him 

" To sow the seed of truth and hope and peace 
And take the root of error from the sod, 
To be of those who make the sure increase 
Forever growing in the lands of God." 



THE BATTLE FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS 

EDGAR Y. MULLINS 

President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 
Louisville, Kentucky 

(The concluding part of a baccalaureate address to the gradu- 
ating class of the University of Texas, 1909.) 

We live in a wonderful age. Great issues are before 
us. There lie slmnbering to-day in secret places the 
twentieth-century issues, the outcome of which you and 
I do not dream, and the question for everyone of us is, 
what part shall we play in it, when there comes a time 
to decide for the side of truth or falsehood, some great 
cause, in this great battle for righteousness within, right- 
eousness in society, righteousness everywhere. 

In the book of Revelation you have a picture of the 
battle for righteousness. Jesus Christ is there against 
all forms of imrighteousness, and the various stages in 
the fight are depicted. Sin, defeated in one form, returns 
in another. The thing that you have conquered comes 
back with a new disguise. The old appetite, the old 



404 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TODAY 

habit comes back reenf orced, and you must fight it down 
again. In one place locusts represent unrighteousness, 
and they are substituted. In another place frogs and 
loathsome things are represented. At another time flies 
represent unrighteousness. At another time a wicked 
woman, and at another time a beast with seven heads 
and ten horns; and at last there comes a wicked seed, and 
the sower sows the wicked seed, and this seed flourishes 
and dominates the world. Finally there comes the down- 
fall of iniquity. The angel descends from heaven with 
a stone which he drops into the sea, and as he drops the 
stone into the sea, he shouts, *' Babylon has fallen!" 
The seer then sees the heavens open, and he sees a city, 
a social order, a realm of righteousness coming down from 
God, down from heaven to earth; the city whose gates 
are of pearl, whose walls are of jasper, whose streets are 
of gold; where they have no need of the Hght of the sun, 
for the Lord God is the light thereof; and from which is 
banished everything that loveth a lie and everything 
that is unclean, and everything that blasphemeth; and 
at last man, not the individual, but man as a social 
order, has been redeemed, and this earth becomes a 
garden spot where the desert had reigned. May God 
help us to play our part in the great drama and share in 
the glory of the great victory at the end. 



WILLIAM J. BRYAN 405 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 

WILLIAM J. BRYAN 

(Extract from an address delivered upon numerous occasions 
in this country and abroad.) 

Love is the foundation of Christ's creed. The world 
had known love before; parents had loved children and 
children, parents; husband had loved wife and wife, 
husband; and friend had loved friend; but Jesus gave a 
new definition of love. His love was as boundless as 
the sea; its Hmits were so far-flung that even an enemy 
could not travel beyond it. Other teachers sought to 
regulate the Uves of their followers by rule and formula, 
but Christ's plan was first to purify the heart and then 
to leave love to direct the footsteps. 

What conclusion is to be drawn from the Ufe, the 
teachings, and the death of this historic figure? Reared 
in a carpenter shop; with no knowledge of literature, save 
Bible Hterature; with no acquaintance with philosophers 
living or with the writings of sages dead, this young man 
gathered disciples about Him, promulgated a higher 
code of morals than the world had ever known before, 
and proclaimed Himself the Messiah. He taught and 
performed miracles for a few brief months and then was 
crucified; His disciples were scattered and many of them 
put to death; His claims were disputed. His resurrection 
denied, and His followers persecuted, and yet from this 
beginning His rehgion has spread until millions take His 
name with reverence upon their lips and thousands have 
been willing to die rather than surrender the faith which 



4o6 AMERICAN ORATORY OF TO-DAY 

He put into their hearts. How shall we account for 
Him? "What think ye of Christ?" It is easier to 
believe Him divine than to explain in any other way 
what He said and did and was. 

I was thinking a few years ago of the Christmas which 
was then approaching, and of Him in whose honor the 
day is celebrated. I recalled the message, "Peace on 
earth, good-will to men," and then my thoughts ran 
back to the prophecy uttered centuries before His birth, 
in which He was described as the Prince of Peace. 

All the world is in search of peace; every heart that 
ever beat has sought for peace, and many have been the 
methods employed to secure it. I am glad that our 
Heavenly Father did not make the peace of the human 
heart depend upon the accumulation of wealth, or upon 
the securing of social or poHtical distinction, for in either 
case but few could have enjoyed it, but when He made 
peace the reward of a " conscience void of offense toward 
God and man," He put it within the reach of all. The 
poor can secure it as easily as the rich, the social outcast 
as freely as the leader of society, and the humblest citizen 
equally with those who wield political power. 

As the Christian grows older he appreciates more and 
more the completeness with which Christ fills the require- 
ments of the heart and, grateful for the peace which he 
enjoys and for the strength which he has received, he 
repeats the words of the great scholar. Sir William Jones: 

" Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth, 
I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth, 
Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, 
And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray." 



3i).77-7 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservatlonTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTtONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberr%' Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



015 863 342 5 



M ' 




•r 



W 




1 '*/< 






! I'i -.1 

y 



f 









''J' '. '\'-f 



